Pastoral Care, PSHE and Wellbeing

Great Stories Begin with Each Other: Nurturing the Whole Child

The children at Hazlegrove are surrounded with care. That care includes at its core, staff for whom going many extra miles is an everyday thing, and who unashamedly make time to talk about the children.

Our tutors are the children’s greatest advocate; they are their first port of call at the start of every day and importantly, the first point of contact for the parents. Tutors meet weekly to discuss children and pastoral issues, and then the Heads of each Section – Pre-Prep, Lower School, Middle School, Upper School, Boarding and Counselling, meet as a Pastoral Leadership team, to strengthen the all-round care. Our All Round Care approach illustrates the depth and richness of the pastoral care at Hazlegrove. It is supported by smaller nurture groups and our school counsellor, all of which offer a tailored pastoral-approach to each child.

Tutor times, assemblies, PSHE and Wellbeing lessons are the obvious vehicles for us to help guide our children along their journeys. Dedicated and passionate staff model good behaviour and support the school is galvanizing those values which we hold dear – integrity, courage, grace, kindness, generosity, and respect – as well as the shared values of our parents, which support them in the raising of their children. Pastoral care is indeed a team effort, and we value and encourage the support and involvement of our parents. 

Like Safeguarding, where safeguarding children is everyone’s responsibility, we engender and foster a culture where all staff are involved and responsible for the pastoral care of all of the children in the school. We review and reflect on every incident to learn from it. Pastoral care is about developing in the children the tools they will use when things are more challenging for them or for their peers, so that they can cope well with everything life can throw at them with a positive self-esteem, resilience, and a sense of belonging to something.

Happy children make happy learners and the wellbeing of our pupils is so important.  

There is a broad range of support across the entire school, from age -relevant calm areas, Mrs Bartlett’s wonderful treasure groups in Lower School as well as Busy Bee time, a timetabled two-week rolling programme of activities such as breathing, peer massage and playing mindful games alongside P4C. P4C stands for Philosophy for Children and is an approach to teaching and learning which encourages and develops children’s caring, creative, collaborative and critical thinking skills. It is these skills which enable children to be independent thinkers and learners across the rest of the curriculum.

The school also has ‘Zones of Regulation’ which is an approach used to support the development of self-regulation in children. Creating a common language to support children emotionally is a hugely effective tool.

Children have access to a dedicated Nurture Room complete with its own teepee where children can come and meet with an adult to help them work through whatever challenge they are facing. There are other sensory and craft activities for the pupils. The space is ‘open’ at break times for drop-ins and is also a place children have access to at other times with the need to be somewhere that feels particularly calm. We have created the Calm Corner in the Fitzjames, a beautiful area that provides a space for quiet and peace during the day.

PSHE and Wellbeing Lessons

PSHE and Wellbeing lessons assimilate scenarios where children are asked to consider ways in which to deal with ‘real life’ scenarios and situations. We also have “handing over” days where staff from each Section, will share with the staff of the next Section, skills that are developed and those that still required attention. In the Upper School, our Year 8s have a Leavers’ Programme, where they are taught the necessary skills needed to cope and thrive in senior school.

Having introduced the acknowledgement of particular individuals at each Friday Celebration Assembly, we encourage and promote kindness through our school values; through assemblies and tutor time, Chapel and PSHE / Wellbeing lessons. We acknowledge specific examples of kindness through awards such a “Lower School Legends”, “Middle School Marvels”, “Upper School Good Egg” and “Boarder of the Week”; we also have Middle School “Transformers” and Upper School Monitors, who through service, display kindness towards others.

When launching our sixth value, Respect, we shared this adapted quote (by St. Francis): “Go forth and respect others by every means possible. If necessary, use words.” Implicit in this saying is the understanding that often the most powerful messages are unspoken. When we have integrity, and live consistently by our values, people notice – our children notice.

Pastoral Care is not a one-off project that draws to a close on completion. It is something that works its way through the fabric of the school on a day-to-day basis.