The school’s story

The school is very much focused on their local community and does a lot to support parents and carers and the wider social community. They have an established community café that is run by parents. They hold workshops for parents and give support for individual parents.

They had a safe space room used intermittently for young people who need some individual 1:1 support, but the Resilience Team wanted to develop this into a more accessible space, and also to use some of their vast outdoor areas to build a garden area where plants and vegetables could be grown, a disco playground where dancing and music can be enjoyed and a ‘chill-out’ area with self-built seating areas and cushions. The school staff have been really enthusiastic and creative with their ideas.

The school decided to create a more young person-friendly space with decorations and sensory activities. The school has a very large outdoor area and wanted to make the most of different spaces.

The school sourced resources and equipment and the pupils built and painted crates for the garden area, and also planted vegetables.

The Resilience Team sourced ideas for materials to use, and how to decorate the areas using clippings from magazines. They decided to create an L-shaped seating area all out of second-hand wooden crates, get the children to paint and decorate the area, and then make cushions and seating areas. For the disco dance floor they decided to paint the floor like a dance floor, buying a school karaoke sound speaker, and then decorate the area by hanging a disco ball and CDs from the tree branches.

What were the successes?

• Creativity and enthusiasm in creating new safe spaces. These spaces have been used as examples for other schools and settings.
• Trained the school in receiving Domestic Incident emails from HeadStart.
• Supported the lead through the resilience toolkit, and full attendance at workshops.
• Uptake of training offered.
• Enthusiasm of the Resilience Lead and focus on improving resilience and emotional wellbeing within the school community.