About The Hive

GLA Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy

The Hive is BCPA’s Pastoral and Behaviour Support unit. The reason for this is that the bee symbolises focus, dedication, hard work, teamwork and generosity, which encompasses all of our school values – Responsibility, Reach, Resilience and Respect. At its simplest, pastoral care is ensuring the physical and emotional welfare of pupils. It is the essential foundation upon which learning can take place and it is our primary focus at BCPA. If children are safe and happy, they learn.

What is pastoral care?

Pastoral care is a provision schools provide, to ensure the social and emotional needs of their pupils are met. 

•      A successful pastoral support program will have all children feeling safe, happy, involved in the school community, and able to perform to their full potential.
•     Teach important life skills that students can implement in their own lives.
•      Pastoral care understands the importance of keeping a child's needs at the centre of support and ensuring all pupils achieve their best. 

The Hive provides bespoke interventions for emotional wellbeing, friendship, concentration and behaviour as well as supporting staff with strategies to support pupils’ well-being within the classroom. It also offers a needs-led support model, in which any child can access the Hive if they feel they need some extra support, or just to talk things through.

How do SEN and pastoral work together to support your child?

As a parent, it's important to know how schools support your child. There are two main types of support:

• SEN (Special Educational Needs) support – Helps children who find learning or communication difficult.
• Pastoral support – Looks after your child’s feelings, friendships, and mental well-being.

These work together to help your child feel happy and do well in school.

How do they help each other?

• SEN support can spot if your child needs extra help with learning.
• Pastoral support can also improve your child’s confidence and friendships.
• When both types of support work together, your child gets help with both learning and emotions.

Strength and Difficulties questionnaire (SDQ)

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a screening tool for children and adolescents aged 4 to 17 years old, developed by child psychiatrist Robert N. Goodman. The SDQ is completed by staff who work most closely with the child. When the questionnaire is evaluated, a “score” is reached. From this score, an intervention can be tailored for children in the area they may need support in. The Pastoral Support Team delivers evidence-based interventions across all of the year groups at BCPA.  

What are SDQs?

Areas of Need

Does Pastoral Support work? 

The Pastoral provision utilised across all schools within the Gloucestershire Learning Alliance and at Bishop’s Cleeve Primary Academy is an exemplary practice as recognised by The Safeguarding Alliance, The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), Gloucestershire Healthy Living and Learning organisation (GHLL) and the Department of Education (DfE). All of our interventions used are research and evidence-based, proven to support children in their area of need.  

What is the aim of the Pastoral team? 

•      Support children in their emotional, behavioural, and social development
•     Create a safe and happy school environment
•     To provide a link between the school and parents 
•     To assist each individual student to enrich personal life
•     To support teachers
•     Encourage school values
•     Build a rapport with the student based on trust, empathy, and active listening
•     Safeguard individuals 
•     Provide support in delivering PSHE curriculum

At its simplest, pastoral care is ensuring the social, emotional, and mental health welfare of pupils. It is the essential foundation upon which learning can take place and it is our primary focus at BCPA. If children are safe and happy, they learn. 

Where do interventions take place? 

Pastoral interventions happen in the afternoons, in ‘The Hive’, BCPA’s on-site Pastoral Support Unit. This is a safe space for children to talk and receive bespoke interventions, delivered by experienced members of staff. 

Interventions

] Within BCPA we see pupils with a wide range of needs ranging from bereavement to social issues. Here in the Pastoral Room, we understand the vast impact these additional needs can have on not only academics but life too. To support this we have developed expertise in a range of interventions to help.

The interventions offered have been tried and tested and are proven to show a positive impact for the children we support. Interventions have a number of benefits:

• To embed the core values of each school and the GLA in pupils for everyday school life.
• To support pupils in how to remove their barriers to learning to enable them to reach their full potential.
• To support the welfare of pupils and their families within the whole school community.
• To promote life-long learning and individual growth.

These are the types of interventions we offer:

• Research & evidence-based interventions. A vast majority of interventions used within pastoral support are evidenced through extensive research to show a positive impact for children. Each intervention used may stipulate a set order, time, frequency or structure to the session to maximise this positive impact. Some examples of researched and evidence-based interventions used within the GLA include:
  • Time to Talk
  • TalkAbout
  • All About Me
  • Banish your Self Esteem Thief
  • My Hidden Chimp
  • The Transporters
  • Starving the Anxiety Gremlin
  • Hamish and Milo

• Nurture-based interventions – Nurture interventions are short-term, focused interventions for children with particular social, emotional and behavioural difficulties that create a barrier to learning within a mainstream class. There is great emphasis on emotional literacy, language development and communication. Pupils are immersed in an accepting and warm environment that helps replace missing/distorted early nurturing experiences and helps pupils develop positive relationships with both teachers and peers. (www.nurtureuk.org).

• Therapeutic interventions - A Therapeutic Intervention is an intervention to improve the well-being of someone who is in need of help but refuses it or is otherwise unable to initiate or accept help. Supporting traumatised children (ACES) often requires a therapeutic approach, which is usually required by social care. Some therapeutic interventions used within the GLA include:
  • Draw and Talk
  • Lego Therapy
  • Sand Play
  • Circle Time
  • CBT

Self-help Resources

(Clicking on the resource title will take you directly to the resource) 

Bishop's Cleeve Primary Academy is part of Gloucestershire Learning Alliance, c/o Bishops Cleeve Primary Academy, Tobyfield Road, Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL52 8NN | 01242 358017 | admin@glatrust.org.uk

Gloucestershire Learning Alliance is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England (Company Number 07690119)