• Alternative lunch or break arrangements with access to adult support where necessary.
• Assemblies on social, emotional and mental health topics e.g., bullying, worrying, exam stress, and bereavement.
• Whole school events e.g., #HelloYellow and World Mental Health Day.
• A separate relational space for children to be supported, feel calmer, safer, and less anxious.
• Outdoor space provision e.g., forest school, peace paths, and friendship bench.
• Peer mentoring program, provided by Cambridgeshire PSHE e.g., peer mediation, website page from South Cambridgeshire School Sports Partnership (SSP) with additional links and resources play leaders.
• Access to ‘therapeutic’ animals or other whole school approaches which enable children to have a greater sense of belonging and calmness in school.
• Teachers or teaching assistants may have access to either a Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO), Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health, Emotional Learning Support Assistants or pastoral lead to help them to consider whole school strategies or approaches, or more tailored interventions. This could form part of a teacher assistants or teacher’s continuous professional development.
• Whole school morning routine which promotes a sense of containment, calm, compassion, and warmth. This could be by ensuring that teachers, head teachers or pastoral support, etc. are typically available at the beginning of the day.
• School staff could make use of support via the Access and Inclusion Co-ordinators or Access and Inclusion hotline to talk about their whole school practices and how this could be adapted for children with SEMH needs.

• Emotional Health and Well-being Service.
• SEND 0-25 Service.
• RHE Services may be able to support teachers, SENCOs, or headteacher to consider their SEMH.

• A quiet corner with calming activities (e.g., a calm box [Size: 146 KB, File: DOCX], reading corner, sensory area). Children and young people in the class should be supported on how to use this area and helped to recognise when they are calm enough to return to their learning.
• A system of lunch/break time friends which may need some adult scaffolding, to begin with. School staff may need to consider how they buddy children up so that children and young people with SEMH needs feel their needs are being met (i.e., that they are cared for, supported, feel contained, and feel listened to). At times, this may require children and young people to have friends in other classes or year groups of the school.
• Clear classroom displays include a visual timetable (which is referred to and up to date), class routines, class rules and noise level indicators (silent work, partner voices, group voices, and playground voices).
• Clear goals, expectations and timescales are shared with the class and adjusted for individuals as needed. School staff should ensure that they provide children and young people with effective feedback regularly focusing both on the child’s effort level as well as their performance.
• Ear defenders, wedges and writing slopes are available to children and young people who need them.
• Now / next is used with the whole class to prompt a better sense of belonging and achievement.
• Regular routines are in place and teaching staff prepare all children and young people for changes. Classroom routines are explicitly taught to the whole class but may need to be differentiated or clarified for children or young people with SEMH needs.
• Regular whole-class mindfulness or exercise breaks. For example:
  • yoga such as Cosmic Kids Yoga,
  • breathing exercises
  • Go Noodle.
• Groupings or classroom dynamics – School staff should consider how they group children with SEMH needs within the class. It can be helpful to pair children with positive role models or children that they respect and like. This may mean working with children with different learning needs. Children’s personalities (i.e., if they are introverted or extroverted) could also be considered when thinking about groupings, tasks, or group work.
• Seating plans reflect the children’s and young people’s needs and views. This should include considering where they sit in class, with whom they sit and how close they sit to the teacher, teacher assistant, resources. It may be appropriate to have a specific assembly seating plan which could include differentiated expectations and seating arrangements.

Children and young people identified with SEMH needs should have some access to support from adults who have had additional training or experience in this area and can provide some emotional literacy support. This could include:

• Specific social skills intervention training (e.g., circle of friends, social stories, comic strip conversations).
• Training to support children’s confidence, self-esteem and sense of belonging (e.g., mentoring schemes and self-esteem interventions).
• Experience or access to manualised therapeutic resources which are designed to help staff and children, or young people understand their emotional health and well-being (e.g., manualised therapeutic resources) - Purchase of book through Buuks: like What To Do When You Worry Too Much, There’s a Volcano in my Tummy, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Work Book by Paul Stallard, Consultant Clinical Psychologist - Think Good to Feel Good [Size: 1,552 KB, File: PDF].
• Experience and time to support children/young people to understand their emotional health and well-being creatively and compassionately (e.g., counselling, ELSA, play therapy, art therapy, music therapy, drawing & talking, journalling, animal therapy).
• Experience using play and games to help children to develop their social skills and friendships. For example, through Lego groups or therapy, board game clubs.

Access to key (named and trusted) adults who ‘check in’ with the child or young person at agreed times. An example of this would be, offering children or young time to be met or greeted by a trusted adult at the beginning of the day, or at times of transition (start, end of break, lunch, or at home time). This time should focus on the child’s hopes or goals for the day and what support they might need to manage this.

Regular opportunities to have learning breaks, particularly if the child or young person has difficulties concentrating, listening or learning needs. This could include:

• Completing classroom or school ‘jobs’, such as taking registers or giving out books.
• Opportunities to be involved in tasks for younger children – e.g., listening to younger children read
• Movement breaks (e.g., stretching, yoga, running, using yoga balls, balancing, physical exercises, putting equipment away)
• Sensory breaks (e.g., accessing a range of sensory activities that are stimulating and calming)
• Opportunities to explore things of their choosing either independently or in a small group for short periods, particularly at times of stress or emotional unrest (e.g., board games, reading, colouring)

Access to ICT (tablet or laptop) to support children or young persons with SEMH needs.

• ICT should also be made available to children or young people to help them to develop their confidence in learning and their ability to produce what they believe is a good piece of work.
• Adults supporting children or young people could scaffold this work by helping them to understand spelling and grammar checks, snip tools, etc.
• Some schools may have access to specific ICT software such as Clicker and word docs or speech-to-text apps. Word processing can be used to remove barriers to learning in terms of writing which can impact children’s emotional well-being.
• Children or young people who have SEMH needs and learning needs should not be required to do unnecessary copying from boards (e.g., learning outcomes and dates). Any specific literacy interventions needed should be delivered whilst also considering the child or young person’s SEMH needs.

Children and young people who are avoiding learning tasks (either by refusing to work, asking to leave the classroom, passively ignoring instructions, or copying others) may initially be considered to have SEMH needs. It is important that adults supporting the child or young person also assess their learning (literacy and numeracy skills) and their listening and metacognitive skills. Adaptations in these areas may have an impact on the child or young person’s emotional and mental health needs.

Children and young people may benefit from fiddle toys, chair bands and sensory support to support their learning and emotional well-being. Teaching staff may have to prompt the child or young person to use strategies that enable them to focus and listen better.

Children and young people may need consistent and regular access to visual aids to help them understand their emotions and the expectations adults have of them. This could include:

• Emotion cards or thermometers which are differentiated specifically for children or young people’s needs.
• Visual aids – E.g., Personalised timetables, now and next boards, timers, time out cards which support children and young people to feel calm. Where there are changes to the child’s day (e.g., unexpected or novel situations) these should be discussed, and a plan should be put in place to reduce the stress and anxiety that could be perceived by the child or young person.
• Learning prompts – E.g., visual task cards, writing frames, word mats, mind maps.
• Approaches that help them to celebrate their successes – E.g., visual representations of the books they have read or achievements they have had, opportunities to display work that they are proud of, opportunities to share their successes with people they most like in school and home, opportunities to laminate work that they put extra effort in.

Some children may need a toileting support plan particularly if toileting or changing is a cause of their anxiety.

Some schools may have alternative planned provisions within the school (e.g., forest school, outdoor activities, or therapy animals) which are used alongside the child or young person’s learning curriculum.

• Within school activities – changes to child or young person’s timetable to enable them to access enriching activities (e.g., cooking, additional music, forest school activities or outdoor learning areas).
• External provision – schools could commission provision through external providers through the Local Authority’s alternative provision pathway. This may not be available for all schools and children or young people.

• The Incredible 5-point Scale by Kari Dunn Duron.
• Facilitated small group work which focuses on building children’s social and communication skills – e.g., Lego club or therapy (Lego Therapy), training available via traded services [Size: 493 KB, File: PDF].
• Circle of Friends, training available via traded services.
• Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour - PEERs (Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational skills). First developed at UCLA by Dr Elizabeth Laugeson.
• Restorative approaches to understanding children or young people’s behaviours and how they can respond to conflict
• Attention Bucket – sometimes referred to as Attention Autism
• Small group activities which enable children or young people to build relationships with others and practice social and emotional skills – Nurture Groups (free book and paid courses) are used in some schools; however other schools offer similar approaches using a different title.

• Emotional literacy support assistant.
• Specific elements of Cambridgeshire Steps could be used as interventions.
• Happy In My Skin is a costed Workbook by Pam Sayer.
• The Incredible 5-point Scale.
• Drawing and Talking is attachment based therapeutic intervention designed to complement CAMHS and other specialist therapies and is an alternative to CBT. Free webinar and paid courses are available.
• Facilitated small group work which focuses on building children or young people’s resilience, sense of belonging and confidence – this could be formal or informal but should be monitored.
• Restorative approaches to understanding children or young people’s behaviours and how they can respond to conflict.
• Specific therapeutic work which could include using resources such as: Think Good Feel Good, What to do when you worry too much; or group-based interventions for anxiety, low mood or exam stress.
• Some schools may have access to specific therapeutic approaches (such as play therapy, creative (art, music, and drama) therapy or counselling. These services are more likely to be available in Secondary Schools. They may not be available in all schools.
• Sensory breaks and movement breaks.
• The Zones of Regulation is a chargeable book by Leah Kuypers. The website also has free resources available.
• CBT Informed Interventions [Size: 493 KB, File: PDF] has resources and guided self-help.