It’s probably no surprise that safeguarding issues have risen across schools in recent years.
We have seen a huge increase of ‘Wellbeing Workload’ in schools and other education settings, with school colleagues needing to deal with a higher volume, more complex mental health and the wellbeing challenges that our children face.
Arthur Ellis is a charity that runs a one-to-one service for children, young people and adults; we deal with over 1,000 safeguarding incidents each year, on average.
Why is the wellbeing workload increasing?
The landscape for children has changed drastically in the last few decades. Incremental lifestyle changes over time lead to dramatic changes at a population level. We have seen a huge adjustment in the way children use technology, with this technology designed to be addictive. Parents are stretched so much with work that technology lends itself so well to being an additional parent in the home.
People who are now 26 years old won’t really know life before smartphones.
The change of lifestyle for children has an impact on their wellbeing make-up. Gaming, for example, isn’t necessarily damaging due to the content, maybe slightly, due to what children are exposed to, but it’s more the sedentary lifestyle it creates that has a longer-term impact.
Our brains revitalise themselves when we move, during a walk, run or active play. A process called neurogenesis kicks off which revives and replenishes cells. This happens in our hippocampus, the emotional regulation centre of our brains. That lack of movement from a young age can impact the way our children regulate their emotions, deal with challenges and their overall resilience.
This is just an example and there are many more life factors that are causing the mental health crisis in children. We can speak more about this in the future.
Is supervision good or bad?
The term supervision is a scary one. At work, if they are supervised, people automatically think they are doing something wrong, that they need looking after and their own capabilities aren’t enough. When we are talking about wellbeing orclinical supervision, this simply isn’t the case.
Arthur Ellis have trained Clinical Supervisors in place and provide this service into education and medical settings. We are experienced in delivering supervision, we know what it is for, and it isn’t to spy, gossip or take over. It is to empower.
We need to work to reframe supervision from a clinical perspective. A Clinical Supervisor is a sounding board for decision making, they help your teams manage their caseloads, supports them with the challenges they face and looks out for their own wellbeing.
With the wellbeing challenges children face only increasing, it is important that those dealing with it are in a good place themselves. To use an analogy: if your own resource basket is empty, how can you give to others?
Ofsted highly recommend schools have supervision in place for colleagues. This should be seen as an opportunity. It is an opportunity to get those minds and that experience together, to share best practice, to discuss trends, to manage safeguarding effectively and an opportunity for Continuous Professional Development.
To have an expert on hand who is external, unbiased and just there for them, can help to, over time, reduce the wellbeing workload on staff and for the school as a whole.
It isn’t for the supervisor to feed back the challenges or worries but to help discover solutions around them. Supervision is personal and professional development – it is empowerment.
Find out more about Arthur Ellis Mental Health Foundation on their website.
