Cornwall Schools’ Wellbeing Hub Newsletter 27th June 2025
Friday 27th June 2025
Welcome to the Wellbeing Newsletter
Welcome to the wellbeing update.
As this lands in your inboxes on Friday 27th School staff and pupils will be gathering in County Hall for a fabulous day of celebration of Children’s Rights and Young People’s Voice. The Right On team are holding a combined Article 12 (respect for the views of the child) celebration for schools involved in the UN Rights Respecting Schools Awards.
Later in the day it’s the Annual Conversation where council leaders, councillors and council staff, members of the wonderful youth council and other young people gather to plan work together that supports children and young people all over Cornwall.
Last year, for example, young people raised concerns about vaping and trading standards and public health worked together with young people to create Vape Anon which allows anyone to anonymously report shops selling vapes to children and other concerns. Vape Anon has been a huge success. Young people were truly heard and have made a huge difference.
If you haven’t yet come across the Cornwall Youth Council I would urge you to do so. You can find information about their work and see their brilliant manifesto for 2024 – 2026 here.
Don’t forget you can now access this and previous newsletters on the website
Wellbeing Training with Headstart Kernow
Protective Behaviours 2 Day Foundation Training
Fridays 4th / 11th July 09.30 – 16.00
St Erme Community Centre, nr Truro
Felt safety is key to connection / belonging / learning and achievement
PBs helps C&YP understand felt safety and gives them strategies recognise when they are feeling ‘safe’ / ‘unsafe’ and what to do if feeling unsafe.
Find out more / book (free)
New Dates for Grandma on the Moon next term
Have you joined the Headstart Kernow Creative Education membership yet?
Sign up here: www.headstartkernow.org.uk/creative-education/
Download our updated Creative Education membership information fliers with access links for:
External organisations - training coming up.
Free Webinar from Thrive UK
Supporting the wellbeing of autistic children in the mainstream classroom
9th July | 16:00-16:45 BST
Led by Laura Nicholson, Thrive’s Practice & Innovation Developer and parent of an autistic child, alongside Viv Trask-Hall, Thrive’s Head of Innovation, this session brings together professional expertise and lived experience to explore:
- Common barriers autistic pupils face - and strategies to reduce them.
- How to nurture supportive peer relationships and communication
- Creating sensory-friendly, inclusive learning spaces
- Supporting pupils experiencing anxiety and managing transitions
- How Thrive’s tools and training can support your practice
Another course from Lisa Cherry - Cultivating Belonging: A Model for Practice 2025 (Cost involved)
Brand new for 2025 - A conceptual model to weave a web of belonging in practice!
Cultivating belonging into our practice can sometimes feel like a tick box exercise; something that we know we should do but without any knowledge of a cohesive way of doing it.
Drawing from Dr Lisa Cherry's research on belonging and written about in her book Weaving A Web of Belonging, this full day session will guide you through the why, the when and the how of incorporating a conceptual model into your practice.
You will leave the day with a clear plan of how to apply her FACES, SPACES, PLACES model into your practice, slides from the day, a toolkit to audit and develop practice, alongside various downloadable items to support your Cultivating Belonging into Practice Plan. This event is suitable for anyone wanting to develop a practice of belonging into their setting, service or system and to deepen understanding of the impact of unbelonging for so many who are then left feeling as though they are invisible and that they don't matter.
Meet colleagues from around the country and draw on collaborative minds across sectors and let's create!
When? - 3rd September 2025 9.30 - 3.45
Where? - Online – Zoom
Your Host: Dr Lisa Cherry
Brook Cornwall Training
Brook Cornwall are pleased to announce more upcoming training sessions.
If you are interested, please click on the Eventbrite links below and register your interest.
There will be more information about the session via Eventbrite.
Upcoming Brook training sessions:
RSE for young people with SEND
Designed for participants to understand the importance of inclusive PSHE for young people with SEND.
Date: 6th August 2025, from 10am to 4pm
RSE for Foster Carers Training
Designed for participants to understand the importance of at home RSE for young people.
Date: 15th, 16th, and 17th July 2025, from 10am to 12pm (you must attend all three dates)
Date: 14th, 15th, and 16th October 2025, from 10am to 12pm (you must attend all three dates)
SHIC (Sexual Health in the Community) Training
An introduction to sexual health for professionals working with young people.
Date: 11th August 2025, from 10am – 2pm
Date: 17th November 2025, from 10am – 2pm
RSE for Facilitators Training: Pornography and Youth Produced Sexual Imagery
Date: 22nd September 2025, from 1 to 4pm:
C-Card Training
For organisations/professionals wishing to learn or upskill and refresh their knowledge on the Cornwall C-Card Scheme
NEW: Dates: 10th September 2025, from 1pm – 3pm
REFRESHER: Dates: 22nd July 2025, from 9:30am – 10:30am
REFRESHER: Dates: 10th November 2025, from 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Date: 17th November 2025, from 10am – 2pm
News / Resources / Updates
Exams and Transition support
Head to our website to order Transition Mission booklets (free)
We also have some more resources centring on Transition:
(see Pooky Knightsmith’s resource below as well)
Time 2 Move Holiday Activity Programme
Summer Bookings for this superb programme are now live.
All the information for parents and carers can be found here
The Engagement Gap
The recent ImpactEd report on pupil engagement in school makes for fascinating and worrying reading. I was recently able to attend an excellent webinar about the project and was impressed by the breadth and the reach of the work. Over 100,000 young people have taken part leading to a powerful and robust data set.
- Professor John Jerrim (UCL) shared some of the findings as well as some of the ways they have been able to analyse the data.
- Nancy Cook (Head at Rockliffe Manor Primary) explains how her school is using this data to shape strategy and drive improvement. Nancy shared the school’s initial dismay at their results – having assumed as a small, close knit, trauma informed school, that they would score well. How they reacted and responded was powerful and effective…
Well worth checking out the webinar recording.
The SEAL Community
The SEAL Community Website is one of our favourite websites for all things Social and Emotional Learning…
As well as being home to the entire collection of SEAL resources it a super collection of information / resources about SEL from one of the country’s leading experts in the field, Jean Gross.
Calling all ELSAs and Trauma Informed Schools Practitioners
On the SEAL website here you’ll find a new guide How to get the best from the SEAL Community: for ELSAs and TIS practitioners. It shows you how to find the resources you need on the SEAL website, and has links to resources that have proved particularly useful and popular – like assessment tools, and resources for work on anger.
Healthy Schools Newsletter
The Healthy Schools June newsletter is now live.
Please feel free to share this link with your contacts
Words Matter - Powerful new film to drive change.
The Words Matter charity campaigning to highlight the power of language, and the lasting damage of verbal abuse have released a short new film. At its centre is a poem by Tally Gilbert, brought to life with moving honesty by 13-year-old Ethan, laying bare the often-unseen damage caused by adult language. The film brings the emotional weight of verbal abuse into sharp focus - calling on all adults to reflect on the way they speak to children.
The poem captures a painful truth many adults will recognise - the words spoken to us as children, whether kind or cruel, echo for years.
News from Pooky Knightsmith
SLIDES: EBSA - school non-attendance
Pooky shares the slides from a recent presentation.
This session doesn’t offer a magic fix (because there isn’t one), but it does offer practical ideas, gentle language, and a mindset shift that can help school feel like a possibility again—for the student and their family.
What’s inside?
- A whole section on safety—not just physical, but emotional, sensory, social, and cognitive
- Ten common barriers that sit behind EBSA (and how to spot them)
- Ways to support students who are frozen, masked, or stuck in shame.
- Ideas for flexi-schooling, phased returns and just holding space.
- Lots of language swaps to help conversations feel more compassionate and less combative.
I’ve woven in real examples, quick wins, and questions to help you reflect on what support might really look like—not just for the student, but for the whole system around them.
Supporting the Move to Year 7 – a guide for parents
Here’s a new resource designed to support parents and carers as they help their child navigate the sometimes bumpy transition from primary to secondary school.
Whether your child is full of excitement, feeling nervous, or somewhere in between, this guide shares ten calm, practical strategies to help the move feel a little less daunting—and a lot more doable.
Inside, you’ll find ideas like:
- Keeping routines steady to provide reassurance
- Having gentle check-in chats that encourage open conversation.
- Creating a low-key ‘survival kit’ for those first few days
- Naming the unknowns to help shrink the fear around them.
It’s written to be dipped into and used flexibly—no pressure, just support when and how it helps.
Colleagues in school, please feel free to share this with your families if it feels useful. I’ve included the Word version too in case you’d like to turn it into something beautiful or branded for your setting (please do share it with me if you do—I love seeing how things evolve!).
Wellbeing Book of the Week
Dear Me, Letters to Myself for all of my Emotions by Tetreault Illustrated by Elisena Bonadio
Aimed at KS1, but suitable for older children in a 1:1 or group setting. It is a simple and effective way to introduce emotions, emotional literacy, all emotions are OK, and we can manage with a bit of kindness for ourselves, and the support of others where needed. This would be an excellent resource to have to hand when introducing work on emotions or when a child is struggling to accept and manage all their emotions.
Recommended.
Free / low-cost wellbeing resources for schools
Excellent free / low cost Social and Emotional Learning resources can be found on some of our very favourite websites:
Whole Hearted School Counseling – brilliant blogs, fab freebies and low cost resources that worth purchasing
Anita who ‘is’ WHSC has been creating some fabulous resources recently.
A recent series of blogs with additional resources have covered some really important areas for supporting young people in engaging and fun ways.
Anita has also been posting some excellent brief wellbeing snapshots for young people and parents via Instagram.
ELSA Support
Again, lots to love with a terrific bank of free downloads and low-cost resources.
Latest freebie is Dream Fixer
Be Happy Resources
Resources to buy and subscriptions to access everything on site but always a free resource or two each week.
This week there are 2 free downloads: My Emotion Rainbow and Kick it or Keep it
Any other sites you are aware of and would recommend?
Digital Resilience Tools and Resources
As part of our overall website refresh, we have updated / improved the digital resilience tools / resources and added some new ones. There are tools for professional, parents and carers and young people themselves. Recent additions include:
- SEND Digital Resilience Guidance
- Was that, OK? tool for young people.
- Podcast Series for young people
Explore these and all the digital resilience resources
Have you visited our new www.headstartkernow.org.uk website yet?
We are delighted to let you know that our refreshed and redesigned website went live recently. We made it simpler to find what you need as professionals supporting children and families need as well adding a new, more prominent area for parents and carers.