Trauma Informed Schools UK
An understanding of trauma and childhood adversity underpins our approach to relationships within our school community. We are committed to ensuring that our school develops a Trauma and Mental Health Informed Approach to ensure that all our children develop positive mental health and resilience, enabling them to fully engage in life and learning. There is a growing body of research and understanding of the impact of Childhood Adversity on long term mental and physical health and the protective factors that mitigate the potential impact. It is our aim to maximise the protective factors of school by creating an environment of safety that has strong, positive, supportive relationships at its heart.
Whole School Approach
We have embraced a wider definition of trauma to encompass any event that is experienced as frightening, painful or out of control, characterised by there being no one available to support or mitigate the impact of traumatic toxic stress. As such, even the day-to-day exposure to events such as divorce, loss of a loved one, illness within the family, preparing for an exam, moving house can be experienced as traumatic. Children and adults can be affected by toxic stress. Providing an environment that has safety, connection and compassion at its heart ensures that our Academy environments never unwittingly re-traumatise any of our community members and act to maximise protective factors through the conscious use of our relationships.
Mentally Healthy School
The Aspire Academy Trust is committed to supporting positive mental health and the Aspire Mental Health Policy is available below.
The ‘Leading a Mentally Healthy School’ training programme has been developed by Health Education England (HEE) and the School Development Support Agency (SDSA), in partnership with an expert group of educational psychologists, education consultants and mental health organisations and responds to the areas highlighted in the recent Green Paper – ‘Transforming Children & Young People’s Mental Health Provision’ (December 2017).
