Health & Wellbeing
NEW Ewellness Brochure
Please click HERE for a link to our new Senior School Ewellness brochure that covers all areas of pastoral care, physical, mental health and wellbeing at the Senior School.
Whole School Nurse
Our qualified nurse, (based at the Senior School) provides medical assistance to all our pupils, across all our sites, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Our Prep and Senior School Reception Teams continue to triage First Aid cases in the first instance. Please refer all medical issues to Schoolnurse@ewellcastle.co.uk and prepschool@ewellcastle.co.uk/seniorschool@ewellcastle.uk (as appropriate).
School Counsellor
As a school, we recognise the importance of mental health, particularly during the teenage years, and therefore offer pupils the opportunity for individual counselling with a qualified counsellor. The service is led by Mrs Carolyn Varney and can be initiated by a pupil self-referring, at the enquiry of a parent or because a member of staff has identified that it would be beneficial.
In today’s culture it is not unusual, especially during the teenage years, for a period of counselling to be helpful. The counselling provides a place where the pupil can talk about whatever is on their mind and causing them stress. For example, relationships with their family or friends, worrying feelings and emotions or upsetting memories. It is now much better understood how emotional issues can impact a pupil’s ability to focus on their work and get the most out of life.
The counselling service is discrete and endeavours to minimise any impact on the pupil’s learning by working (as far as possible) around their academic timetable and providing confidentiality (within safeguarding limits) between the pupil and the counsellor. This confidentiality is important to create a safe place for the pupil to talk about whatever is on their mind. The School covers the cost of the first six counselling sessions, after which the parents are usually asked to contribute.
For more information about the counselling service please contact Carolyn Varney via her School email address.
Senior School ELSA
Mrs Michelle Greensmith is our full time ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) at the Senior School. An ELSA is a beneficial role within School, supporting pupils (who are referred by their Heads of Year) if struggling with overwhelming emotions such as anxiety, anger, stress, low self-esteem or sadness.
Each child receives weekly, 1:1, private and confidential sessions (within the School's safeguarding limits) and an individualised programme of strategies and high-level CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy), without any cost to parents. ELSA pupils will learn to explore their feelings, increase their emotional awareness, and learn some useful coping strategies to take away and try for themselves. Sessions usually run over a defined 6-8 week period, equipping pupils to go on and build their own resilience upon completion of the programme.
Our Senior School ELSA also runs some small group, lunchtime workshops, which help to bring pupils with similar issues together, for additional peer support An example of this might be the "Wednesday Warriors" anxiety workshop, or the "Super Self-Esteemers" club. Contact Mrs Greensmith via her School email address. For more information about the ELSA role and qualifications, please see here: https://www.elsanetwork.org/about/
Click here for an ELSA Parents Information Leaflet
Prep School ELSAs
For information on our Prep School ELSAs, please refer to the following web page https://www.ewellcastle.co.uk/news/wellbeing/2020/05/04/senior-school-elsa/
Mindfulness at Ewell Castle School
At Ewell Castle School, Mr Bader-Clynes, our Mindfulness Lead and Director of Drama is a certified Mindfulness teacher of classroom-based mindfulness techniques. Having trained with the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MISP), he currently teaches various MISP courses to pupils throughout the School.
Prep School
In the Prep, we have just introduced an exciting new course called ‘dots’ to Year 1 and Year 2 and are teaching Paws b to Year 5. In the Summer term, we will be introducing ‘.breathe’ to Year 6.
Senior School
In the Senior School, Year 7 are all taking the ‘Paws b’ course, in Form Time and Year 10 pupils are doing the ‘.b’ course as part of a dedicated Mindfulness class. All these courses are part of the rich tapestry of Mindfulness courses from MISP. All are intended to enrich the pupils’ lives and improve emotional resilience, wellbeing, and self-awareness.
As the School continues its wellbeing journey, we are investigating other mindfulness courses and initiatives as part of the curriculum and as part of the co-curricular timetable. Years 10 and 11 will get a 16 week Mindfulness course in their GCSE year. For this year there is no Year 11 Mindfulness teaching. However next year the .b course will be taught to Years 10 and 11.
You may have heard of mindfulness or read some of the recent media coverage about it. A great deal of this media interest has arisen because of the growing body of rigorous research evidence regarding the potential benefits of mindfulness for young people. These include randomised control trials and neuroscientific studies.
According to Professor Katherine Weare, (Emeritus Professor, University of Southampton and Honorary Visiting Professor, University of Exeter) schools who engage in mindfulness are likely to see ‘beneficial results on the emotional wellbeing, mental health, ability to learn and even the physical health of their students. Such interventions are relatively cheap to introduce, have an impact fairly quickly, can fit into a wide range of contexts and above all are enjoyable and civilising, for pupils and staff.’
The benefits of Mindfulness
The classroom-based mindfulness curriculums we teach are an awareness-raising exercise to give all pupils a taste of mindfulness so that they know about it and can return to it later in life if they choose to do so.
