Name: Emma Buckle

Role: Assistant Headteacher at Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School in Kingstanding. I have been the Senior Mental Health Lead for 2 years, but have been on the Senior Leadership Team for 6. I lead on both pupil and staff wellbeing across the school; I am a Designated Safeguarding Lead and a passionate History teacher. I am therefore well placed to comment on the current issues / challenges surrounding leading on mental health in the secondary sector.

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Staff Development

This month I will focus on the ‘Staff Development’ part of Public Health England’s 8 Principles. We have done a lot of work at Cardinal Wiseman in recent years, encouraging staff to prioritise their own mental health, and providing them with training on how they can better support the students with their varied wellbeing needs. I will therefore split this part of the blog into two sections, with the first focusing specifically on the wellbeing of our staff body, and the second the training we have provided so that our staff feel more confident with supporting the students.

Prioritising staff wellbeing

Good staff wellbeing is essential to the success of a school; a school cannot function without its staff! Just as an artist or engineer would look after the tools of their trade, we have a commitment to look after the tools of our trade, which is us, the staff body!

We have a vision at Cardinal Wiseman in which staff work hard, spend a manageable amount of time on the activities that make a difference to pupil lives and do this in a positive working environment. To show our commitment to this vision we have a staff wellbeing lead on the Senior Leadership Team, a staff wellbeing link governor and staff wellbeing is discussed at every governor meeting. It is also an agenda item at every Head of Year, Head of Department and subject department meeting. Staff wellbeing is promoted on our school website and every new member of staff - including our trainee teachers - has a discussion on the importance of staff wellbeing as part of their induction into the school.

Every member of staff also has access to our Employee Assistance Programme, provided by the Education Support Partnership, which is advertised - along with other staff wellbeing materials - on our staff wellbeing board in the staffroom. Each new member of staff, and those returning from a period of significant leave, such as maternity or paternity leave, are inducted back into the school and given a ‘buddy’ - basically a friendly face and supportive ear - who can support them on their Cardinal Wiseman journey. I would suggest that Cardinal Wiseman is extremely proactive with regards to our staff wellbeing, introducing many of these initiatives long before the DFE (Department for Education) published its Staff Wellbeing Charter.

The DFE Staff Wellbeing Charter is a set of guidelines to promote the physical and mental wellbeing of education employees. It outlines various principles and initiatives aimed at supporting staff members in maintaining a healthy work-life balance, managing stress, accessing resources for mental health support, fostering a positive workplace culture, and promoting overall wellbeing. The specifics of the charter may vary depending on the organisation's priorities and the needs of its workforce but the 12 main principles are shown in the image below.

A good starting point for establishing your staff wellbeing priorities is gathering feedback from your staff body via a questionnaire or staff voice group exercise. Cardinal Wiseman also has a Staff Wellbeing Committee made up of volunteers, whose function is to gather information from staff on various different topics and then use this feedback to inform and shape practice. One of the first things this committee did was to create a ‘Staff Email Protocol document’ - I agree that this is not the most catchy name - which seeks to set clear boundaries around communication in the school. The driving force behind this document was the creation of a better work-life balance for our staff - i.e. emails are not to be sent outside of the hours of 8am-6pm and never at the weekend -, and the reduction in the amount of email traffic staff have to read and reply to which was causing unnecessary stress.   

Other initiatives I have adopted over the last few years include: A training session specifically for staff on their own wellbeing, in which staff were told why their well being needed to be prioritised and we used the Mind Wellness Action Plan template to assist staff in identifying their wellbeing needs and encouraging a dialogue around this with their line managers; staff voice group meetings specifically for support staff (support staff can feel forgotten about or second best at times in some schools and will often have different needs / concerns to teaching staff); a self defence training session for our female staff, following some of the disturbing stories on attacks on women in the news; a talk from a nurse about the impact the menopause can have on our female colleagues; and a spotlight on men’s mental health to coincide with Mov-ember.

Staff wellbeing should not be a tokenistic add-on, it needs to be an integral part of the ethos and culture of the school. Everyone who works in education knows that it is a demanding job, but staff should feel as though they are able to thrive in their roles by working in a supportive and caring school environment.

Further suggested reading:

●     For more information on the government’s Staff Wellbeing Charter follow the link:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter

●     You can read more about the EAP we use at Cardinal Wiseman here:

https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/get-help/help-for-your-staff/employee-assistance-programme/

●     You can read more about the Mind Wellness Action Plans here:

https://www.mind.org.uk/media/12145/mind-wellness-action-plan-workplace.pdf