Wellbeing at Cobham Hall

Wellbeing at Cobham Hall

Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead, Miss Fenice, has had an incredibly busy term, launching a variety of initiatives for both students and staff. These have included training for students, details of which are opposite, and the creation of an action group for staff, introducing regular social events and opportunities to talk.

The term started with Miss Fenice putting into practice her training from Girls on Board. This initiative, now shortlisted for a TES Wellbeing Initiative of the Year Award, aims to empower girls to manage their relationships with one another and solve their own friendships problems. Having been the first in the country to complete the training, Ms Fenice was keen to help support our students and share the strategies she had learned. She launched the programme with Year 11, and rolled it out to other years as the term progressed.

To supplement the roll out of the programme, Miss Fenice hosted a ‘Four Week Focus on Friendship’; a series of workshops held in the School’s Wellbeing Centre looking at ways to mend fences after a fall out, considering the impact of things shared online, resisting peer pressure, how to forgive, and how to rebuild trust, amongst other topics.

In addition, there was a ‘Time to Talk’ drop-in session during Children’s Mental Health Week in February, designed to encourage girls to pop into the Wellbeing Centre and discover the support and advice available. Later in the term, ‘Mindful Mondays’ were launched, run by Geography teacher Mrs Kipling, also a passionate advocate for youth mental health. These sessions were designed to support Years 11 and 13 as examinations approached.

Developing Self- Esteem with Dove

In early April, Years 7 and 8 took part in a workshop lead by Nadia Mendoza of the Self-Esteem Team, who support the Dove Self-Esteem Project.

The girls were encouraged to reflect on society’s opinions on the perfect man and perfect woman, and the results demonstrated that the societal view of a ‘perfect’ woman was mostly based on appearance, and a ‘perfect’ man on what other traits he offers.

Nadia then showed the girls how these views have changed throughout the last 100 years, showing that while something may be deemed attractive now, in a few years, it’ll change. Reflecting on her own experience of growing up, she explained that she never felt represented by the ‘model’ image and that the more she tried to fit society’s ideals, the less happy she became.

The discussion moved on to what makes people unique, and these

showed much more value based characteristics. To further emphasise this difference, Nadia asked the girls to consider the last compliment they gave someone, and think about who they know that they would like to spend two weeks with, and why that person. The responses showed that compliments were mostly appearance-based whilst spending time with someone showed how much more inner values were prized.

Nadia explained how even though while watching TV, or scrolling through social media can make us feel insecure and sad about not match those societal ideals, we perpetuate it by complimenting people based on looks rather than values, giving the impression that appearance is of more worth than who they are as a person.

The workshop ended with Nadia challenging the girls to create a ripple effect of complimenting their friends’ inner values more than how they look, and to question appearance ideals.

Girls Become Ambassadors

Late February saw 30 girls assemble in Clifton Common Room with the aim of becoming the School’s first Wellbeing Ambassadors. They were encouraged to think about and explore different aspects of Wellbeing, including the impact of poor wellbeing. They were also given guidance on how to spot pupils who may need support, and how to work with staff. Through role-play, the girls were able to understand how to have conversations about Wellbeing, including concepts of active listening, neutral statements and open questions.

Cobham Hall has long had a strong Peer Mentoring system, but this took a leap forward this term as a number of Cobham Hall girls became Student Ambassadors as they undertook either Wellbeing Training with David Gumbrell of Teach Well Alliance, or Anti-Bullying Training with The Diana Award.

Miss Fenice commented, “The girls were really engaged for the whole day. They all worked incredibly hard and it was wonderful seeing girls from Year 12 working with Year 7s, all with the same aim. I was extremely proud of how focused the girls were and how they engaged with David and the topics discussed.”

At the end of the course, Wellbeing Student Ambassadors were provided with a reference handbook, a certificate and a badge, awarded in Assembly to denote their role as an Ambassador. The girls will now be encouraged to put the training to work, by supporting their peers and bringing any issues to the attention of staff.

Following the great success of the Wellbeing Ambassador Training, Miss Fenice invited local schools to join Cobham Hall for a day’s Anti-Bullying Training with The Diana Award.

The Diana Award, the only charity set up in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, was founded to further her belief that young people have the power to change the world. They have a variety of initiatives and programmes to support this mission, and the Anti- Bullying Campaign aims to reduce bullying in schools.

Approximately 130 students from other schools joined a number of Cobham Hall girls for the day’s training, which involved understanding what bullying is, and how to tackle it. The students ended the day by creating an action plan to promote harmony and reduce bullying in their schools.