We use The Thrive Approach as a whole school strategy to promote positive mental health and the growth of emotional resilience. Thrive helps us to support the development of confident, curious, creative and capable children. We believe that positive mental health improves the ability to learn and therefore opens doors to a bright future for our children. 

Please see our Thrive leaflet below.

As an academy, as well as Thrive interventions we also offer our children Lego Therapy, who need additional therapeutic support.

LEGO-Based Therapy is a social development program that uses LEGO activities to support the development of a wide range of social skills within a group setting.

Playing with LEGO in a therapy setting promotes social interaction, turn-taking skills, sharing, collaborative problem-solving and the learning of concepts. It can be used to target goals around social skills, language and motor skills. By using a commonly adored tool like LEGO it capitalises on its existing motivation and supports self-esteem by allowing the participants to demonstrate their skills in a social situation. It also sets up a positive opportunity for guided social problem-solving to help develop social skills that can then be used in other situations.

At Simpson’s Lane Academy, we’re committed to promoting positive mental health and wellbeing.

– Miss Coopey is our Senior Mental Health Lead.

– Mrs Silburn is our Wellbeing Lead.

– Miss Holmes is our SENDCO

Within the academy, there are 4 Mental Health First Aiders: Mr Colley, Miss Coopey, Mrs Tolson and Mrs Silburn.

We believe a whole school approach to the topic is paramount and ensure all stakeholders are educated about mental health and wellbeing, in addition to being offered support at both a whole school and individual level. Mrs Silburn works with children and families, as well as working with outside agencies to locate support and education for pupils.

Our environment aims to promote wellbeing for both pupils and staff. We have a fully resourced Thrive room, a sensory room and an immersive suite in addition to our classrooms and intervention spaces.

Our curriculum is designed to support mental health and wellbeing and includes: PSHCE sessions focussing on the topic, whole class Thrive sessions, Mindful Monday Assemblies and themed days relating to specific topics throughout the year.

This week’s assembly:

This week our assembly fell on World Mental Health Day. We looked at what mental health is and discussed ways of looking after our mental health