Saint Kevin's College Wellbeing

Here at Saint Kevin's College we offer support strategies to maintain and improve our wellbeing right across all year groups.

What is the Positivity pod?

· The Positivity pod is a Nurture Group can accommodate individuals or small groups at any one time in an unconventional classroom. It is used to help students engage in the day to day running of St Kevin’s College.

· A safe place that help young people to cope with the demands of school and develop the skills and confidence need to participate in school.

· It provides opportunities to return to activities associated with an earlier developmental stage in order to develop social and emotional skills, such as craft, games, gardening and cooking.

The pod works around the Six principles of Nurture Groups, which are:

· Students’ learning is understood and responded to developmentally

· Nurture Room offers a safe and predictable environment where adults are reliable and set firm boundaries

· Students are valued and responded to as individuals to support their self-esteem

· Language is a vital means of communication

· All behavior is communication

· Transition is important

Who would benefit?

Students who need extra help to settle and listen or build their self-confidence will benefit from this intervention. These students are shown how to self-regulate their emotions.

Who runs the Nurture Group?

The group is planned and delivered by Heidi McSheffrey, our Pod Co-coordinator . Heidi works closely with Mrs. MacDonald Pastoral Vice Principal and the rest of the school pastoral care team.

What happens at the Nurture Group?

The Nurture Group sessions happen during a regular timetabled slot and follow a similar structure of activities each week to provide a safe, predictable setting.

If you want any more information contact Mrs MacDonald by ringing the school

on 028 67721417 or pupils can contact Heidi through Google Hangouts and adding her

email address hmcsheffrey313@c2ken.net (Click on the link to the right).

hmcsheffrey313@c2ken.net

Student Wellbeing & Welfare Officer

Roisin Conlon is the designated Student Wellbeing & Welfare Officer here at St.Kevins College. Roisin’s role is to provide support and guidance to all students in regard to well-being and mental health. Students take part in weekly workshops where they will try out different stress relief techniques such as meditation and aromatherapy.

Wellbeing Centre

Plans are well under way for our new Wellbeing Centre which will be a place students can visit to get away from stress and worries. It is a safe place to share worries and learn techniques and tools to help overcome these issues. The building will include a meditation area, chill out zone and a kitchen for when we want to have a cuppa and catch up and to learn lots about nutrition and what food helps with well-being!

Wellbeing during lock down

Lock down has been difficult for everyone and we wanted to let our students know that we are here for you and we miss you so we sent out all our Year 12s and Year 14s a ‘well-being care package’ which was kindly sponsored by the PTFA and Swifts Supervalu. Included was a hot chocolate sachet, a chocolate bar, a worry coin, mindful colouring pages and an information leaflet on well-being techniques!

In the pack everyone also received an invite to a virtual tea party with their year groups and teachers. This event was to bring our students together as we are faced with loneliness at the moment, it was great to see faces that we haven’t seen for a while and we had some down time from classes where we had a fun quiz and catch up with each other!

RECHARGE Virtual Mental Health Festival - to celebrate Children's Mental Health Week we held a virtual festival. Each class is provided with a period of time where their normal class timetable is collapsed to provide them with a more pastoral approach through well-being activities and guest speakers such as Dr.Kerri Mc Connell who spoke about the effects mental health can have on us physically/ mentally and explored different techniques and services available. We also had fashion influencer Meghan Zidek all the way from America who spoke about how you can express yourself through fashion and Shauneen Maguire, award winning harpist who spoke about how music relates to mental health and played some relaxing songs for us. During the festival different members of staff held workshops on mindfulness, well-being, personal growth, meditation and dog therapy!

Workshops

Each student benefits from well-being workshops where they explore the importance

of well-being and mental health. Guest speakers are invited in such as Doctors, art

therapists, reflexologists and personal trainers. Students will explore meditation,

mindfulness, art/music therapy, gardening and try out healthy recipes such as some

tasty fruit smoothies to name only a few of our fantastic workshops on offer! At the

end of the programme for each year group they will get a day trip away to the likes of

Todds Leap or the Share Centre to have some fun and take part in activities that will

help release stress!