Produced by the Catholic Children’s Society Issue No.4 Date: September 2013
Welcome Back to a new School Year 2013/14 Welcome back to a new school year! I hope everyone had a wonderful summer and enjoyed the sunshine at last! with some much needed rest, relaxation and joyful time with family and friends. The summer holidays offer a time not only for relaxation but also for reflection. Here at CCS we have also been looking back. Our school psychotherapy, play therapy and mental wellbeing training services have grown considerably and last academic year we worked with pupils and teachers in over 60 senior and primary schools in every part of the Diocese. In June we held our annual Maureen Roe, Trustee The Catholic Good Shepherd Mass where over 3,000 Children’s Society (Westminster) of our primary school children attended to hear Archbishop Vincent Nichols speak about the importance of making time for prayer. Earlier in the year we held a very successful conference for primary head teachers and undertook a piece of research with some head teachers to explore levels of child poverty witnessed in schools. With the start of a new school year we now look forward to growing more partnerships with our schools. Our web Site www.ccsconnected.org.uk offers important advice to teaching staff about services available to help support children who may be struggling at school as a result of bullying, family breakdown, and bereavement or who have behavioural difficulties. Whatever the issue CCS may be able to help, please do get in touch. We are also exploring ways in which we can engage more readily with schools and will shortly be launching our new ConnectEd Twitter and Facebook accounts. Please look out for our first message later this week!! We hope your school will help us to reach out to parents by re-tweeting or texting key messages about our work that are linked to our work with children and families. As we enter into this new academic year and the Year of Faith ends we must remember that we continue to grow together in faith as we encounter new opportunities to reflect on our personal, professional and spiritual growth. We continue to recognise and appreciate all that supports Catholic education and the Catholic community and offer our support to you as you deal with the multitude of challenges in preparing Catholic school pupils who will make a difference in our society.
Maureen Roe.
Trustee The Catholic Children’s Society (Westminster)
Newsletter for Teachers in the Diocese of Westminster Lenten Appeal 2014 The design of our Primary School Lenten appeal for 2014 is already well under way and this year we are planning to have materials available in schools before Christmas. This will allow teachers more time to plan their work and incorporate the lesson plans we have produced to support the appeal into their schedule. We shall be providing individual collection boxes for each child together with an exercise book backed by lesson plans for teachers with OHPs. If you have not already ordered your Lenten packs please contact: Julie Willoughby on 020 8969 5305 or e-mail juliew@cathchild.org.uk To support the appeal and tell students about our work, we would like to come and talk to your staff and pupils. Our presentations will be made from January 13th and continue throughout Lent. In the past these presentations have been very popular so please book early using the contact details above.