Pastoral Care

Supporting all families within our school

Mrs Witt and Mrs Langford are Learning Support Assistants within Solent Junior School, and also qualified Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSA), supporting pupils and their families with a range of pastoral needs.

The role of the ELSA is to support our pupils and their families to ensure that they can learn positively and flourish during their time at Solent Junior School.

Everyone has times when they wish someone was there to offer help when they really need it. There can be times in a child’s life when things get in the way of their learning. A child might struggle for a variety of reasons e.g. they might be experiencing feelings of anxiety, anger or worry or loss. Our ELSAs work alongside our pupils and their families to overcome these barriers to enable them to thrive both in school and within their wider lives.

Types of Support our ELSAs can offer:

Support and guidance – a chance to talk through concerns or problems.

A link between home and school – by working together we can help your child to achieve in their learning.

Guidance about things which have an effect on how your child gets on at school - behaviour, attendance and punctuality, routines and organisation, relationships.

Help with concerns about starting school or moving to another school.

Support and information about how to get further help when necessary.

Supporting parents to develop and maintain a positive relationship with the school.

Help families and children to access services, resources and local community information.

To contact the team you can e-mail familysupport.junior@thesolentschools.org

Armed Forces Support

Point of Contact: Mrs Witt (Solent Junior School ELSA)

An exciting part of the ELSA role is to support the Service families within our school.  As a military wife and mother of 2 children, Louise Witt has experience and knowledge that can be of benefit to you, so that you can work together to provide the best possible care for your family.

In order to provide the best support for our Armed Forces families, it is important that we are aware of any planned deployments, house moves, school changes, changes in home circumstances etc so that we can plan and put in place the appropriate support for your children. We will of course take advice from you on what support you feel is suitable, as we appreciate every family is different. Communication between school and home is essential to ensure that your child is effectively supported during their time at Solent Junior School.

As a part of this role we can support you by:

• Providing deploying/absent parents a Solent Teddy which they can take with them and send us pictures and stories of their travels that we can share either at assembly or in class.

• Having regular “check-in” sessions with those children who need extra support during times of deployment etc.

• To be able to email deployed/absent parents some of their child’s work and any photos of them that have been taken at school during that time.

• If your child is moving to/from another school out with normal transition time, then we can also support you and your child in planning that move. Some ideas are to create a scrapbook of their time at Solent, also to liaise with their new school and find out more about their new class and teacher etc.

 To keep school updated please e-mail familysupport.junior@thesolentschools.org 

Mental Health

Solent Junior School is a place where the positive mental health of everybody is at the heart of all that we do. This is underpinned by a strong culture of equality of opportunity for all. Visitors often comment upon this being the first thing that they feel as they are welcomed into our school community. We recognise and embrace the fact that we are all in a fortunate enough position to be able to do so much to support our community and bring about positive change.

Our approach is initially a preventative one; a universal approach, which focuses upon stopping mental health from deteriorating in the first place. Even the smallest of actions, with our youngest pupils, can make a significant difference later on; creating a ripple that will last a lifetime.

Our school is a warm and caring environment within which adults and pupils thrive and learn together, feeling confident and comfortable talking about mental health and knowing where to turn for support if they are experiencing mental ill health. They feel able to be themselves in the secure knowledge that their needs will be met.

Our guiding principle is clear; a happy, safe, warm and predictable environment is one where we will all thrive, flourish and grow. This approach is underpinned by our 6 core values, developed and shared by our whole school community:

• Friendship

• Teamwork

• Respect

• Responsibility

• Perseverance

• Aspiration

Additional Support

We recognise that there will be times at which mental health needs can begin to interfere with usual day-to-day functioning. At this point, we work closely with our pupils and their families to consider how additional intervention could support them. This might stem from our highly skilled ‘Rainbow Room’ team of ELSAs in school, or may involve support from outside agencies where more appropriate. The strong and positive relationships with our families, that we value and treasure so much, enable us to work closely together to find the bespoke support to best meet the needs of the individual child.

If you become at all worried about your child’s mental health, please make contact with us via the ‘contact us’ tab on the Family support page of the school website.

See below some useful links: