Plumcroft Primary School

South London Listens and Citizens UK are working across South London to develop Be Well Schools.   Aligning with mental health in schools teams, the programme draws on the skills of community organisers and our NHS mental health trainers to enable students, staff and parents to come together, listen and take action to improve mental health and wellbeing.  The programme also offers opportunities for school communities to be part of a wider civil society network and participate in campaigns impacting on issues effecting the wider determinants of health such as housing.

Plumcroft Primary School in Woolwich have been part of the programme since 2024, 140 of their staff from both sites have completed community organising and schools focused mental health awareness training, with a range of follow up actions, and have also generously shared their learning with other Be Well schools at a recent training event.

Alicia Whytock, Head of School, Plumcroft Primary School said.

“During covid like many schools we found it challenging to keep children engaged in learning.  We therefore took the opportunity to have a greater focus on wellbeing strategies.   We started by supporting families on line during covid by offering a range of wellbeing activities, and over time have built our whole schools approach to wellbeing.

The Be Well team (Citizens UK and South London Listens) has helped our staff, pupils and parents/carers greatly.  We now have a clear action plan for mental health and wellbeing. 

Being part of this community has enabled our staff to access free training including trauma informed approaches.  The team have helped us adopt a growth mindset ensuring we always work on the next steps for our schools to be a positive place, where pupils, staff and parents/carers can thrive.  .

Our strategy has involved:

1.  Bringing the whole school community together once a term to explore creative    strategies.

2.  We have a  focus on wellbeing for students, staff and parents.    This has included working with our Citizens UK community organiser to listen to parents via coffee mornings, so that we can support and build peer support.  We are also building parent champions to lead this work.

3.  Creation of 25 Year 6 wellbeing Ambassadors who have come up with some great ideas such as creating peer support in the playground, calm down comics, outdoor spaces, a wellbeing dog and a good news corner for staff to name but a few!  Our year 6 champions have also been working with South London Listens to co-produce mental health and wellbeing training primary school pupil ambassadors which will help other schools.

4.  Being part of the programme has also enabled us to have a focus on supporting the wider community via participating in campaigns.  For for example our pupils have recently been part of the South London Listens housing campaign; and were involved in a visit to parliament. In addition some of our pupils have developed an animation with another Be Well Site (Creating Ground), to demonstrate the impact of temporary housing on children’s mental health and education. 

Snow Inn Hotel | Creating Ground

Many of our children and families have experienced some kind of trauma and challenges and we believe its important to give children the tools to self-manage and support eachother as much as possible.   We found the recent training on this very helpful to inform the practice of all our staff and had very positive feedback.”

“The training really made me think about our need to change language used and encourage training for al staff”.

“It will enable me to build more approachable conversations with children”.

“This training will enable me to be a more mature, mindful, patient and empathic teacher”.

“I now understand that trauma can start from a little thing that to you may not be a big deal, so we must bear in mind that everyone is different so take things differently, we must consider this.”