Pupil Wellbeing Champions
Staff Handbook Primary Schools
Contents 1
Introduction
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What is a wellbeing champion?
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The case for wellbeing champions
9
Assessing need and deciding on aims and outcomes in your school
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Establishing commitment, support and leadership
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Audit of pastoral care system and local agencies for signposting
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Roles, recruitment and selection process
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Promotion and advertisement of your champion programme
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Training for pupil champions
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Safeguarding
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Support for champions
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Monitoring and evaluating your project
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Example paperwork
Introduction
Compass BUZZ is an innovative project which works with the whole school workforce and other key partners in schools across North Yorkshire to increase the skills, confidence and competence of staff dealing with emotional and mental health concerns. This guidance has been written by Compass BUZZ to support primary schools in North Yorkshire in setting up a pupil wellbeing champion programme. The aim of this document is to give school staff a starting point when setting up their own champion programme and to help staff reflect on the best way of going about this. To go along with this staff guidance, Compass BUZZ have also developed a training workshop to be delivered to students in schools so that they can become skilled champions who promote wellbeing in their school community. We believe that adults working together with pupils to build awareness of mental health and wellbeing and reduce stigma will contribute towards taking a whole school approach. ‘Promoting Children and Young People’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing’ by Public Health England (2015), sets out eight key principles that head teachers can embed in order to promote a whole school approach to emotional health and wellbeing. These are the eight areas in which schools need to take action to embed whole school cultural change around mental health and wellbeing and they are as below:
An ethos and environment that promotes respect and values diversity
Targeted support and appropriate referral
Curriculum teaching and learning to promote resilience and support social and emotional learning Enabling student voice to influence decisions Leadership and management that supports and champions efforts to promote emotional health and wellbeing
Working with parents/carers
Staff development to support their own wellbeing and that of students
Identifying need and monitoring impact of interventions (Public Health England, 2015)
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We believe that adults working together with pupils to build awareness will contribute towards taking a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing
Having a pupil wellbeing champion programme operating in your school has links to multiple principles (depending on how your programme works). For example, a successful programme will raise the profile of the pupil voice, and curriculum, teaching and learning may also be impacted if pupils peer teach wellbeing topics. A successful pupil wellbeing champion programme is just one part of working towards a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing. To ensure you embed this fully, it is important that your wellbeing champion programme is one of a number of initiatives, changes and efforts across school, and that these are each supported and maintained. 2
What is a wellbeing champion?
A wellbeing champion is simply anyone who promotes wellbeing to others; specifically in schools it is anticipated that pupil champions will promote the wellbeing of their peers. There are many different forms of peer support operating in schools and these can be known under many different names, e.g. peer mentoring, buddying or wellbeing ambassadors. One broad definition of peer support is: Using the knowledge, skills and experience of children and young people in a planned and structured way to understand, support, inform and help develop the skills, understanding, confidence and self-awareness of other children and young people with whom they have something in common. (Street and Herts, 2005).
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Here at Compass BUZZ, we have a vision of pupils across North Yorkshire becoming wellbeing champions in their school communities. These individuals will champion positive cultural change in relation to wellbeing and become ambassadors for promoting a whole school approach to wellbeing. Our aim is for champions to make noise about wellbeing, raise the profile of this important agenda and bring an additional layer of energy and engagement to your school’s existing approach to mental health and wellbeing. There are three basic models we advocate:
Wellbeing champions acting in an educational and promotional way
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to raise awareness about wellbeing and break down stigma by:
• Raising the profile of the wellbeing agenda
• Reducing stigma by talking about feelings and emotions
• Being a good role model and a good listener
• Building awareness of sources of support
• Promoting a healthy lifestyle, wellbeing and resilience
• Being kind, caring and helpful towards others.
These wellbeing champions can use a variety of means to be able to do this such as: assemblies, presentations, PSHE lessons, newsletters, posters, display boards, stalls and events.
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One example of this model is: Peer Education Project St Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School The role of the wellbeing ambassadors at St Mary’s is: 1) To spread happiness and peace throughout the school. 2) To welcome new children and staff to the school. 3) To be kind, caring and helpful towards others. 4) To always treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. 5) To promote and put into place the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’. (Connect, Take Notice, Give, Keep Learning and Be Active) 6) To always follow God’s word.
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Our aim is for champions to make noise about wellbeing
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What is a wellbeing champion?
Wellbeing champions who directly support other pupils with 2 wellbeing issues.
Use either one-to-one or group sessions to:
• Be a friendly and approachable person
• Listen to and support their peers
• Help other pupils with their problems and worries
• Help other pupils with problem solving
• Signpost other pupils to appropriate sources of support
• Pass on safeguarding issues or concerns to the champion coordinator or trusted adult. One example of this model is: West Sussex Schools Peer Support Programme (Mentoring and Befriending Foundation, 2014) 15 primary schools and 5 secondary schools set up peer support projects. Of the primary peer supporters, 57% were in year 5, 16% were from year 6, 16% were from year 4, and the remainder were mostly from year 3. Some of the models used were playground buddying and one-to-one support. The most common issues the peer supporters helped with were friendships, behaviour and confidence.
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Wellbeing champions who provide both options 1 and 2.
• To act in an educational and promotional way in relation to wellbeing
• To directly support other pupils.
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The case for wellbeing champions
Schools are stable, organised environments that are centred on learning, which provides a natural opportunity to educate and raise awareness of wellbeing issues through the use of wellbeing champions. •0 Children acting as wellbeing champions can help to remove the barriers some young people feel there are in reaching out for support for their wellbeing. Some may prefer to talk to a peer or someone they identify with rather than an adult. Some may also be more likely to take on board advice from a peer than from an adult. Talking to a wellbeing champion may then increase their confidence in going on to speak to others about it. •0 ‘Nothing about us without us’. Children deserve to have a voice and to be more involved. Wellbeing agendas, though well intended, can sometimes feel like they are being ‘done to us’, by adults or health professionals. Having pupil wellbeing champions increases collaboration, ownership and responsibility. •0 Peer support also increases confidence and happiness in the peer supporter as they are left with the feeling they are benefiting their peers and providing a service that is needed as well as giving them further skills to help support their own wellbeing if they ever need. •0 Evidence suggests well managed peer support projects can improve self-reported happiness and wellbeing, as well as improve self-esteem, confidence, emotional resilience, relationships, social skills and school behaviour (as surmised from Department for Education, 2017). It is also suggested that peer support projects can have wider ‘whole school’ benefits due to fostering a cooperative community based on trust, respect, communication and helping others (Cowie and Smith, 2010).
Having pupil wellbeing champions increases collaboration, ownership and responsibility
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Young people deserve to have a voice and to be more involved
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Assessing need and deciding on aims and outcomes in your school
To ensure your wellbeing champion programme is successful, a needs analysis is necessary. This will provide you with the information you need to ensure your programme is tailored to meet the needs of your school and your pupils. Consider what the common issues are for children in your setting. Often this is not what we expect, so it is a good idea to speak to your school community about this. The earlier you can get children and young people on board, the better, so that they can shape the development of your programme. You could approach your student council or perhaps put together a questionnaire. You could also use this opportunity to ask about how they would envisage a wellbeing champion package operating, for example, would they like a drop in space, a buddy bench, would they talk to a peer supporter, would they prefer to get these messages in an assembly or in a whole class setting? To get the point of view of your staff body, you could bring this up at a staff meeting or organise a separate questionnaire. You can also use information gathered from relevant documentation such as the local Growing Up in North Yorkshire survey (2018), any recent inspection reports and your school development plan. This will then give your programme a focused direction and from here you can build some realistic and achievable aims and outcomes, which will link up coherently with your wider priorities. When you have completed this, you may be in a position to decide which of the three models of wellbeing champion packages you are going to opt for in your setting.
The earlier you can get children and young people on board, the better 9
Key questions to consider: • 0 What are the common issues our children and young people face with regards to wellbeing? e.g. feeling lonely, rural isolation, not knowing how to tell people they are struggling, low mood, worries around school work and friendships • 0 How are you going to find out more about the common issues in your school community? e.g. questionnaire, pupil council, focus group, staff meeting, local surveys or recent reports/plans • 0 What is your aim for the programme? e.g. to promote wellbeing and a healthy lifestyle by increased awareness of these issues in school through pupils educating their peers • 0 What outcomes do you hope for? e.g. to reduce the number of pupils identifying as feeling low most of the time • 0 Which model of wellbeing champion support are you going to put in place in your school? What will this look like? e.g. option 1 educational wellbeing champions who will form a sub group on the school council and meet monthly to discuss, design and implement whole school campaigns around wellbeing (e.g. assemblies, fundraisers and wellbeing activities) See example documentation on page 27. 10
Establishing commitment, support and leadership
A key feature of successful pupil champion programmes is that they have ongoing, active support from the Headteacher and senior leadership team. This is to make sure that programmes are fully embedded and driven to create an ethos and environment that is informed by both pupils and staff. Senior leadership need to ‘buy in’ to your programme and value its importance so that it has the time and resource needed to be sustainable over time. Ideally your programme will have a named lead on the senior leadership team who will be responsible for overseeing the programme. Senior leadership will also need to obtain the support of both the staff body and the board of governors. This may take time and discussion over several meetings. Ideally you will also have a programme coordinator in school to oversee your programme. This person needs to be well trained, committed to the programme, organised and able to be a strong leader. Suggested training for the coordinator would be levels 1, 2 and 3 of Compass BUZZ training or an equivalent school mental health training programme. The coordinator also needs to be available to offer vital support to the pupil champions when they need this. 11
Senior leadership need to ‘buy in’ to your programme and value its importance
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Audit of pastoral care system and local agencies for signposting
When deciding on the remit and aim of your pupil champion programme, you will need to consider what support is already available and how your new programme may complement existing systems or services. Identify what support systems are already in place in your school that could be utilised, such as a nurture group or a school counsellor, for example perhaps the counsellor could deliver training to your pupil champions on good listening skills. Also consider what support systems are available externally in your local area and consider how these might be utilised to complement your programme, for example your school nurse may be able to provide resources for your pupil champions to adapt into their own assembly on a healthy lifestyle. Once you have audited the current support systems in place, you might find it useful to draw it all up into a list or diagram for the use of pupil champions in case they want to make any suggestions to their peers. Compass BUZZ can provide information to support this. It is important that your champions (and indeed the rest of your pupils) understand the help available, and so you might also consider inviting representatives in from services to explain what they do. Key questions: • What support systems are currently available in your school, local area and national services? • What do these support systems provide to young people? • How can they be accessed? • How can your new pupil wellbeing champion programme potentially utilise or complement these? • What age appropriate online services and apps are available?
It is important that your champions understand the help available
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Roles, recruitment and selection process
Senior Leader As mentioned above, ideally you will have a named lead on the senior leadership team who will be responsible for overseeing the programme. This active support is important to ensure the programme is embedded in the school’s ethos.
Coordinator The coordinator is the adult in school who will be accountable and responsible for the pupil wellbeing champion programme. The duties of this role include recruiting pupil champions, delivering the pupil champion training, overseeing the promotion of the programme, risk assessing the programme, overseeing the work of the champions and supporting them when necessary, liaising with parents, staff, Senior Leadership Team or governors regarding the programme when necessary, collating information and data, reviewing, evaluating and amending the work of the programme as necessary.
Support staff Depending on the size of your school, it may be appropriate to have additional staff involved who are able to support the programme. This may be at the training session, supporting the champions, or to step in if the coordinator is absent or if the coordinator leaves.
Pupil wellbeing champions The role of the pupil wellbeing champions is to raise awareness about wellbeing in their school and to break down stigma on this topic. The champions themselves should have autonomy over how they go about this, for example they may like a dedicated physical space, a break time drop in, or they might like to wear an identifier such as a wristband, but some general anticipated duties include: •0 preparing for and presenting on the topic of wellbeing in assemblies or lessons •0 creating promotional materials such as posters, display boards and newsletters etc. •0 normalising conversations around feelings and emotions •0 suggesting sources of support to their peers.
A formal application process will be useful in communicating the importance of the role
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Recruitment and selection process Initially the coordinator will need to circulate some introductory information about the programme to pupils, including: • what the programme is about • information about the role of the pupil wellbeing champions and training available • invitation to apply for a champion role. This could be through your normal avenues of information sharing in your setting but suggestions include flyers, newsletters or through presentations in assembly. A formal application process will be useful in communicating the importance of the role and will give credibility to those who are successful. As part of the recruitment and selection process, the coordinator might wish to ask pupils to write a letter stating why they think they would be good for the role, or complete and return an application form by a certain date (including parental consent), shortlist applicants and inform them of an interview time, date and location and what to expect, interview candidates sensitively, select successful pupils and inform all interviewees of the outcome with feedback. See example documentation on page 27.
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Promotion and advertisement of your champion programme
Initially, the coordinator will need to promote the programme in school in order to get interest from pupils in applying to become champions. This could be through your normal avenues of information sharing in your setting but suggestions include flyers, newsletters or through presentations in assembly. Once pupil wellbeing champions have been recruited, the pupils can take more of a lead on the promotion and advertising of the programme whilst being supported by the coordinator. You will need a big initial push on promoting the programme and then there will be times throughout the year where you can make a concentrated effort to promote the programme and keep the momentum going. The champions can discuss the best ways to move forward with promoting the programme and they will have their own ideas on how to make sure everyone in school (staff and pupils) are aware of it. There are some ideas here: • Pupil wellbeing champions to decide on their own logo, branding and associated colours for promotional materials • Posters, flyers and leaflets designed by pupil wellbeing champions and positioned around school • Pupil wellbeing champions and/or coordinator to do assemblies or talks in lessons • Information in the school’s parent newsletter to promote the programme • Use of school website to raise awareness of the programme • Contact local media to raise awareness about the work your pupil wellbeing champions are doing e.g. local newspaper or radio station.
The pupils can take more of a lead on the promotion and advertising of the programme
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Training for pupil champions 
You will need to provide ongoing training and support to your pupil wellbeing champions, but at the start of the programme there will need to be a concentrated effort on ensuring the pupils have the necessary skills, knowledge and confidence. Training the student champions is important so that they feel confident in their role and so that they can act appropriately. Compass BUZZ have developed a training workshop for the coordinator to deliver in school to their own champions which aims to give them a basic understanding of their role, communication and listening skills, wellbeing and a healthy lifestyle. An outline of this training will have been demonstrated to a representative from your school via a ‘Train the Trainer’ model, for your school to independently deliver to your champions. Extra training may be necessary for your champions which may also depend on local context and issues that are particular to your school community, but the Compass BUZZ training workshop should give you a good starting point. Compass BUZZ recommend that the school member of staff who delivers the training to the pupils has done Compass BUZZ training themselves (levels 1, 2 and 3). This is to ensure that they have a good understanding of relevant issues and skills and can best advise and support the champions in their duties. We recommend the number of attendees at your pupil training workshop is limited to between 12-15. This is to ensure that you can encourage group discussion, have time to develop the skills of each attendee, answer questions, and so that you can provide support if needed.
Training the pupil champions is important so that they feel confident in their role 19
Please refer to the Compass BUZZ pupil wellbeing champion training package for more information. Key questions: •0 Who will deliver your training? •0 When and where? •0 Is there any additional training you would like to look into?
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Safeguarding
One of the main benefits of a wellbeing champion programme is raising awareness about wellbeing and reducing stigma so that people feel more able to be open and reach out for support. With this in mind, it is important that you establish clear boundaries for your programme from its implementation and publicise these to all pupils and staff, to help keep everyone safe. To specifically protect your pupil wellbeing champions from receiving disclosures in relation to safeguarding (and in turn keep them safe), it is important to clearly outline the role of the champions to all pupils and staff in your setting. They have an educational role to raise awareness and promote positive wellbeing; the pupils are not there to be counsellors, therapists or advisors. Your pathways for support should be well publicised alongside your programme and should be known to all pupils and should also form part of your pupil wellbeing champion training package. This will also help to keep people safe; both the pupils who have a potential disclosure to make and also the young people acting as champions as it reduces the chance of them hearing this information. Your training for champions should explain what to do if they are worried about someone’s safety. Your staff coordinator and any other support staff should be available to the pupil wellbeing champions to answer any questions and offer support. To support your champions as much as possible, ensure they are: • Clear on the boundaries of their role • Aware of which staff members they can speak to if they have any worries, particularly about safety.
Training for champions should explain what to do if they are worried about someone’s safety
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Support should be given to the pupil wellbeing champions on an on-going basis
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Support for champions
As part of the programme, support should be given to the pupil wellbeing champions on an on-going basis. To support your champions, you should routinely offer a safe and confidential opportunity for children to share their experiences, and any worries or concerns that they may have. The staff coordinator and other support staff should set up a system where the pupil champions can access them for a chat and so that they are not left to cope with any issues alone. This may partly take place in an arranged session which occurs regularly, but the pupils should also be able to access support at any time on an ad hoc basis to check in.
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Monitoring and evaluating your programme
It is important to reflect on whether your programme is working to meet your aims and objectives and to assess the impact it is having on your school community. This may be of particular use if you are later required to evidence the effectiveness of your work, for example to inspectors, governors or as part of funding applications. In line with GPDR you can collect and securely hold a variety of data that may be of use to you, of both a qualitative (numeric) and quantitative (descriptive) nature, for example you might keep: • demographic information relating to your pupil wellbeing champions • attendance data, the types of issues raised by the champions • discussion contents at any relevant meetings • the types of issues that other students talk to the champions about (which could be broken down by year group) • number of mental health and wellbeing issues self reported to school staff • number of known referrals or signposting interactions made through the coordinator. You can also circulate questionnaires throughout the year to gather information, and for more qualitative data you could ask pupil wellbeing champions to interview certain pupils about their views (including their view of the programme). It is helpful to have a starting point for comparison so you may wish to get a questionnaire out or collect various pieces of data quite early on in your programme for this purpose; ideally before any work commences.
It is important to reflect on whether your programme is working to meet your aims and objectives and to assess the impact it is having on your school community
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Example paperwork 
Compass BUZZ can provide you with various electronic templates to assist with the set up of your champions programme.
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Having pupil wellbeing champions increases collaboration, ownership and responsibility
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References
Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (2014) West Sussex Schools Peer Support programme: Peer Support in primary and secondary schools in West Sussex [online]. Available at https://lemosandcrane.co.uk/resources/West-Sussex-Peer-Support-programme_ Annual-Report-2013-14.pdf [accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. St Mary’s RC Primary School (2019) Emotional Health and Mental Well Being at St Mary’s [online]. Available at http://www.st-marys.oldham.sch.uk/school_life/wellbeing/wellbeing.html [accessed 23 Jan. 2020]. Cowie, H. and Smith, P. (2010) Peer support as a means of improving school safety and reducing bullying and violence. In B. Doll, W. Pfohl, & J. Yoon (Eds.), Handbook of Youth Prevention Science (pp 177-193). New York: Routledge. Department for Education, (2017) Peer Support and Children and Young People’s Mental Health Research Review [online]. Available at www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-and-young-peoples-mental-healthpeer-support [accessed 30. Jul 2019]. Public Health England, Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition (2015) Promoting children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing. London: Public Health England. Skills for Care (2007) Street, C. and Herts, B. (2005) Putting Participation Into Practice, Young Minds, [online]. Available at www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/social-welfare/pdfs/non-secure/p/u/t/ putting-participation-into-practice-a-guide-for-practitioners-working-in-services-to-promote-themental-health-and-wellbeing-of-children-and-young-.pdf [Accessed 30 Jul. 2019]. Growing Up in North Yorkshire (2018) Available at: https://cyps.northyorks.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Childrens%20voice/GUNY/ NYork2018summary_SCREEN.pdf
This champions package including all resources are the intellectual property of Compass and therefore cannot be reproduced or shared outside your school.
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Compass BUZZ aims to strengthen the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people aged 5-18 (25 with SEND) across North Yorkshire.
