Well-being

Engagement Survey - February 2022

Some schools have requested a template engagement survey to gauge their employees' views. Southwark Schools HR have now provided a template for you, which can be found here ^(docx).

Southwark Schools HR can administer this survey, analyse the data and report back to you/your staff if required with suggested recommendations. If you wish we can also create an electronic version of this for you.

If you want to use the template yourself without Southwark’s input you can do but the introduction will need to be amended. Suggested ways of administering the survey can be discussed with Southwark HR and are also mentioned in the survey.

Please do contact Amelia Sleat amelia.sleat@southwark.gov.uk if you have any questions about this survey.

 

Now and Beyond - Mental Health and Wellbeing Festival for Schools - 9th February 2022

In partnership with Tes, Now and Beyond is the UK's only mental health and wellbeing festival for schools.

On 9th February 2022, join thousands of other educational settings taking part in this national event. You will have access to free bespoke workshops from approved experts for your school, lesson materials and live programming on Festival day.

Please access the link below for more information.

https://nowandbeyond.org.uk/

 

Stress and Mental Health: Health & Safety Executive Working Minds Campaign - November 2021

On 16 November HSE launched its Working Minds campaign warning that work-related stress and poor mental health risk becoming a health and safety crisis for Great Britain’s workplaces. While the full impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is yet to be fully understood, mental health issues are the number one reason given for sick days in the UK. Last year more than 17 million working days were lost as a result of stress, anxiety, or depression. A recent survey by the charity Mind suggests that two in five employees’ mental health had worsened during the pandemic.

While ‘Working Minds’ is specifically targeting workers in small businesses, HSE is calling for a culture change across all of Britain’s workplaces, to ensure psychological risks are treated the same as physical ones in health and safety risk management and become part of the routine. The campaign is based on:
• reaching out to start open and honest conversations,
• recognising the signs of stress,
• responding by taking actions, seeking solutions rather than offering excuses, and then
• reflecting on the actions taken.

For local authorities, aside from individual referrals, the application of the HSE stress standards adapted accordingly will be a key to managing stress and mental health across the workforce. In the November/December edition of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) magazine Birmingham City Council explain their steps to identify and address stress at work with the use of service area stress audits which can highlight problems that might not be apparent from focussing on individual cases. This provides an emphasis on prioritising primary actions such as workload and organisational issues rather than simply relying on secondary and tertiary actions such as resilience training and employee assistance programmes.

Local authorities will of course need to consider in their assessments the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic but it could also be that the changes to the world of work such as increased agility and hybrid working could lead to differences in the relevance of the various stressors, e.g. isolation and support could become more of an issue.

 

Free Mental Health Support for School Leaders - November 2021

A new £760,000 mental health support scheme has been launched for school leaders, to be delivered by the charity Education Support  from this autumn until March 2023. The programme will provide one-to-one counselling and peer support to around 2,000 school leaders, helping those at deputy head level and above with their mental well-being.

The free support, offer’s deputy head level leaders and above:

• Facilitated online peer support where leaders can safely reflect with other school leaders
• Individual telephone support is time for leaders to explore how they are doing and get emotional support 
• Leaders can apply now 👉 https://bit.ly/3n1fHIY

 

Education Staff Well-being Charter - November 2021

An updated  ‘Education staff wellbeing charter’, which includes ‘a declaration of support for, and set of commitments to, the wellbeing and mental health of everyone working in education.’   It was co-created by the members of the education sector including the LGA, unions, DfE and Ofsted.  Use the charter to:

• show staff that you take their wellbeing seriously
• open a conversation with staff about their wellbeing and mental health
• create a staff wellbeing strategy
• create a wellbeing-focused culture