As part of our therapeutic provision, our school counsellor is able to support children who may require support. This may be as a result of, grief, family separation, anxiety or many other issues. Like adults, children need support from time to time.

Mrs Debbie Anderson is our school counsellor.

Throughout and following lockdown, we adopted the Stop, Understand, Move, On approach to supporting mental health. We really believe the mental health of our children is crucial in enabling them to make progress, developmentally, academically and pastorally. The children have found the principles below, valuable in enabling them to articulate their feelings and thoughts and respond positively using appropriate strategies to help. You many want to explore these and discuss these with the children.

 The SUMO Principles

SUMO is based on six principles, each of which is encapsulated by a simple, catchy, memorable phrase.

The SUMO principles are accessible to people of all ages, but leave scope for open, thoughtful and age-appropriate conversation between school staff, students and parents.

The six SUMO principles are:

• Change your T-Shirt
• Develop Fruity Thinking
• Hippo Time is OK

• Remember the beachball
• Learn Latin
• Dare to Dream

Explore each of these principles below!