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Safeguarding and support for pupils

 
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NAHT members are at the forefront of safeguarding children. School leaders are committed to keeping children safe, so they can learn well. NAHT believes that all pupils should receive the support they need to maintain their well-being and achieve their potential, both within school and from wider services including health and social care.

NAHT is campaigning to:

Enable schools to play their part in supporting pupils' well-being

  • Lobby for pupils and schools to get the support they need from wider services including health, social care, police and youth services
  • Influence the implementation of the proposals from the mental health green paper, including the senior lead for mental health and mental health support teams
  • Support schools to access relevant, high-quality training and resources to enable pupils to exercise their right to support for their mental well-being.

 

Support schools to safeguard and protect pupils

  • Engage with the DfE over proposed changes to the role of the Designated Safeguarding Lead
  • Influence changes to Keeping Children Safe In Education, Working Together and Sexual Violence and harassment guidance
  • Campaign to improve online safety for children and young people
  • Press the government to ensure home educated children are adequately safeguarded
  • Promote guidance and resources to support schools to protect children at risk of harm including involvement with violence and other crime.

 

Enable schools to support vulnerable groups of pupils

  • Campaign to ensure pupils with SEND can receive the support they need from schools and wider services
  • Press for improved alternative provision and collaborative approaches across communities to support pupils excluded from school
  • Provide information to schools to help them to support disadvantaged children
  • Enable schools to make informed decisions regarding parental requests to home educate
  • Ensure reforms to behaviour guidance and networks is evidence-based and appropriate for all schools and a diverse pupil population. 
 

Mentally Healthy Schools – access quality-assured information, advice and resources on mental health and well-being

Mentally Healthy Schools offers schools access to information, advice and resources to support their pupils' mental health. 

This website is a fantastic practical resource for schools, drawing together quality-assured and useful information, advice and resources into one place.

Mentally Healthy Schools is a legacy project of the Heads Together mental health campaign, supported by its charity partners Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, Place2Be and YoungMinds, with expert guidance from Centre for Mental Health and advice and support from NAHT.

What the site covers

Mentally Healthy Schools provides a range of expert and practical information and resources to help all school staff understand, promote and deal confidently with children's mental well-being.

The site provides an introductory 'getting started' section for both primary settings  and secondary settings, and splits its resources into four sections:

  • Resource library: provides a range of resources available to build schools' abilities to promote and build pupils' good mental health with a range of quality-assured teaching resources
  • Risks and protective factors: helps school staff to understand the risk factors that may challenge and undermine children's mental health and to understand what they can do to help build good mental health resilience, and reduce the risks that can harm children's mental health
  • Mental health needs: focuses on children who have become mentally unwell or have another condition that may impair their ability to thrive and learn without further support or adjustment from schools. It includes information on different conditions that might affect children, behavioural indicators, and the strategies that schools can employ to support pupils
  • Whole-school approach: provides information on what a whole-school approach involves, and gives guidance to help school leaders to implement a whole-school approach to mental health and well-being.
First published 15 March 2021

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