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Pastoral and ELSA

Pastoral care is a provision schools make to ensure the physical and emotional welfare of their pupils.

A successful pastoral support program will have all children feeling safe, happy, involved in the school community and able to perform to their full potential. Happy pupils will integrate well with others and any problems spotted will be ready to be dealt with.

At Ashton Vale we utilise a Trauma Based Approach, where we prioritise children's mental health and wellbeing in everything we do. 

We utilise the Unique Voice Mental Health Toolkit where we follow carefully planned lesson around the following 6 themes.

You can find more about the Unique Voice Mental Health Toolkit here.

The school utilises two Learning Mentors who are highly skilled at supporting both children and families and are also trained ELSAs.   

What is an ELSA?

ELSA is an initiative developed and supported by educational psychologists. It recognises that children learn better and are happier in school if their emotional needs are also addressed.

An ELSA is a specialist teaching assistant with a wealth of experience of working with children.  ELSAs are trained and regularly supervised by Educational Psychologists. An ELSA is a warm and caring person who wants to help your child feel happy in school and to reach their potential educationally. Their aim is to remove the barriers to learning and to have happy children in school and at home.

ELSAs help children and young people learn to understand their emotions and respect the feelings of those around them. They provide the time and space for pupils to think about their personal circumstances and how they manage them.

It was designed to build the capacity of schools to support the emotional needs of their pupils from within their own resources.

Our Aim

We aim to establish a warm, respectful relationship with a pupil and to provide a reflective space where they are able to share honestly their thoughts and feelings. We can't necessarily fix their problems but we CAN provide emotional support. Change cannot necessarily be achieved rapidly and is dependent upon the context and complexity of the presenting issues. For children with complex or long-term needs it is unrealistic to expect ELSA intervention to resolve all their difficulties, however support will be designed to target specific aspects of a child's need. If additional support is needed, we will work with our families to organise additional support  from other agencies.

In ELSA we aim to provide support for a wide range of emotional needs:

  • recognising and understanding emotions
  • building self esteem
  • social skills
  • friendship skills
  • anger and behaviour management
  • loss and bereavement
  • relaxation techniques
  • transition / change

Teaching children skills to help them deal with their emotions.