21 January 2021
Miss Charlotte Owen, Head of Marden
Pastoral care at Woldingham and student wellbeing remains a top priority and an area of continued focus during this period of remote learning. One of the best things we can do right now is give our girls a sense of normality and continuity to their school day. We’re also keen to provide parents with information and resources to help you to support your daughter with her wellbeing and we’ve subscribed to a new hub for parents, which is detailed below.
Our THRIVE programme continues each week and, while some sessions that were planned will remain because we feel that the topic is important to cover, we have adapted others to reflect the importance of wellbeing at this time. Our Wold Wellbeing Wheel (pictured here) provides a sense of what we have discussed and what we are continuing to encourage the girls to do so that they are equipped to look after and potentially improve their own sense of wellness.
To endorse that sense of our Woldingham community, we are trying to run as many live sessions as possible in terms of assemblies and 1:1 sessions between tutors and students or students and Heads of Year. Ultimately, our Sacred Heart ethos is very much at play as we navigate our way through this challenging experience and the message of kindness, care for others at this time, and also self-care is regularly relayed.
To help parents support their daughter’s wellbeing and mental health, we have subscribed to a Wellbeing Hub, run by a company called Teen Tips, whose founder is Alicia Drummond. Alicia has already given a number of very helpful talks to the Woldingham community, the most recent being about teens and screens. The Wellbeing Hub offers:
- a parenting teens course;
- tips on a range of topics, such as teens and emotions, TikTok safety, parental boundaries, looking after mental health and what to do when it all goes wrong;
- a library of Q&As on topics such as anxiety, drugs, alcohol and self-image;
- the Inspiring Futures podcast series about careers;
- details of specialist support and a therapist directory.
Parents have been emailed details of how to access the Wellbeing Hub and joining instructions can also be found on our Parent Portal.
We hope that this will be a useful toolkit for parents and welcome any feedback you may have on the package.