Mental Health and Wellbeing
Your Space
Hove Park is heavily invested in the emotional wellbeing and mental health of all our young people. The work we do to identify mental health needs and the packages of support on offer at Hove Park has resulted in local and national recognition. Within Brighton and Hove we are considered to be the leaders in this area with some of our strategies being rolled out across other schools. Hove Park was chosen to take part in the Department of Education's Mental Health Champions Project. Our tiered response to mental health and the impact of our skilled pastoral teams and fully integrated counselling service was praised and published as a case study of good practice in May 2018. Having mental health and emotional wellbeing embedded as a priority across the school structure has reduced stigma around mental health, ensured shorter waiting times for counselling and created a team of staff who are supported, skilled and have an increased confidence in offering emotional support to students.
Our Statement of Intent
“At Hove Park School & Sixth Form Centre, we promote positive mental health and wellbeing for everyone in our school community. We aim to look after ourselves and each other. Our curriculum supports this through personal, social and health education which is reviewed regularly, and is responsive to the changing needs of our students. Opportunities beyond our curriculum promote active and healthy lifestyles. Celebration of our diversity and our commitment to kindness, supports us all. Where mental health and well-being needs are identified for anyone in our community, be it students, staff, parents or carers, our goal is to signpost access to universal and specialist support, with compassion and without judgement.”
Find out more about wellbeing at Hove Park:
Radio 4, Storm and Stress: new ways of looking at adolescent mental health.
Listen now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7f4m9
BBC Bitesize, In a class of their own: The school prioritising mental health.
Department of Education, Supporting mental health in schools and colleges: Survey and case studies with schools on activities to support pupils' mental health and wellbeing.
Read our Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy here.
I am a student
Being a teenager is hard and our school days can come with lots of challenges. We might find ourselves struggling with stress or anxieties, have difficulty managing our emotions or may be experiencing problems in our relationships with friends or family. Life can get tough for everyone and we all need a little help sometimes. There are lots of adults at Hove Park here to help, no matter what the problem is. If you don’t feel able to approach a member of staff to talk about what’s going on for you, please email yourspace@hovepark.org.uk
and we will reply to you.
I am a parent/carer
If you are worried about your young person, there is lots of support on offer. Please get in touch with their Form Tutor or Year Office if you have any concerns around their emotional wellbeing. There is specialist support available, no matter what the problem is.
At Hove Park we’re working hard to develop the mental health and wellbeing of everyone in our school community. We are still accepting parent and carer volunteers to join our Mental Health and Wellbeing Working Group to help us evaluate and improve the work we do in this area. Feel free to pop to along to any/all meetings with us, where topics you are interested in will be discussed. Information about upcoming meetings will be shared via email and on our Social Media Feeds/Website.
We also run workshops for parents and carers. Previous events include: Anxiety, Depression, Exam Stress, Self-Harm, Parenting Workshops and Transition to Secondary School.
Hove Park School have worked with Make Good Trouble on their Radio Series for BBC Radio Sussex ‘Raising Teens'. Raising Teens is a warm-hearted, honest and practical show about teenage mental health, featuring round table discussions about a variety of topics including body image, the teenage brain and relationships. You can catch up on Season 1 here:
Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions
The Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions are well established at Hove Park. There are approximately 50 active Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions and more young people already expressed interest ahead of the 2019 recruitment assemblies. Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Champions receive two days of Mental Health First Aid training, helping them to feel more confident when having the supportive conversations that they would already be having with their peers. Since we started the programme, our Champions have given assemblies, organised anti-stigma events, helped us to understand what makes being a teenager difficult today and provided peer support to young people experiencing difficulties. After observing the impact of Hove Park's MHWBCs, Public Health England commissioned the YMCA to roll the programme out across Secondary Schools in Brighton and Hove in 2018-19. At the #IAMWHOLE Celebration Event, our Champions were incredibly proud to see the way that their work had inspired young people from other schools across the city.
Wellbeing Team
Primary Mental Health Work - Schools Wellbeing Team
Sydni is our embedded CAMHs practitioner. She provides short term intervention, assessments and supports the initial stages of the diagnostic pathways to assess for things like Autism or ADHD. Sydni attends our pastoral triage meetings and provides liaison between Hove Park and CAMHs.
School Counsellor
Rose is an Integrative Arts Counsellor, offering short and long term interventions targeted around particular mental health needs and/or pieces of work, with a focus on trauma. She also supports our triage processes, assessments and gives expert advice to our Year Teams.
Students are referred to the Wellbeing Team via their Year Team or through a Your Space assessment. We allocate support based on need and there is often a waiting list.
If you would like to know more about the Wellbeing Team, please contact your child’s Year Team.
Local Support Services
Hove Park supports young people and their families with a range of wellbeing and mental health concerns. We can quickly help with practical day-to-day strategies, school based interventions, therapeutic support and in making successful onward referrals to outside agencies.
However, there is also a fantastic range of organisations and agencies who can offer advice and support outside of school. We have collated contact details for the local agencies and online support that we would recommend. This is a list of suggestions, and we welcome updates and suggestions.
If you need urgent support for your child’s mental health, please call Specialist CAMHS on 0300 304 0061 between 08:30am – 4:00pm. Outside of these hours, seek support from the Royal Alexander Children’s Hospital.
School nurse videos
Parent/Carers services and support provided by the NHS
