Embedding the CHS in ASSET schools

Looking after our staff

Every ASSET school, and the Trust central team, has a member of staff appointed as a Complete Human Strategy Lead. Our CHS Leads meet regularly and form part of a collaborative network across our trust, focused on the continued improvement of staff wellbeing and the CHS approach.

Each half term CHS leads consult staff in their schools on wellbeing, focusing on a different pillar so that all 6 are covered across the year. Staff are given the opportunity to feed back ideas on what could be done to improve their wellbeing, and leads share these at their meetings, and feedback key ideas to ASSET.

Most CHS Leads are also adult mental health leads, and can provide in the moment support, as well as signposting to trust and external sources of support. The CHS model enables Leads to go deeper than the half termly "check-in", conducting the full CHS diagnostic that helps staff who are struggling to see where they need to focus.

Every school and the Trust Central Team have created a CHS charter around the 6 pillars - an agreement about "the way we do things here" that is co-created by staff in each place, creating a code for all us to support, respect and be accountable to each other in terms of what matters to all of us. Each charter reflects the culture of the school team that created it.

Annually ASSET shares a staff wellbeing and satisfaction survey, checking in on the effectiveness of our central support services, and the wellbeing, workload and stressors of all staff across every school and role. Trust strategy is informed by these survey results, and the results and ideas staff share are in turn shared with schools and the CHS Lead team.

Leaders work with CHS leads to improve their staff wellbeing, but leadership itself can be lonely. Headteachers have access to one-to-one coaching and coaching support groups, as well as ASSET Circles, clusters of professional networks that allow leaders to work closely together and support each other.

Looking after our children

Every ASSET school is a Thrive/Trauma Informed setting, with staff trained as ELSAs, Thrive practitioners, play therapists and more. All schools have Forest Schools and wellbeing spaces and curriculum time devoted to PSHE, wellbeing, oracy and agency.

Early in each term staff conduct a "check-in" on one of the CHS pillars with every child. These check in points enable classroom and pastoral staff to identify the small changes that can make a big difference for children, and enable us to get "upstream" of challenges that they face, before they reach crisis point.

If a check-in throws up a number of issues, teachers can do a full diagnostic with children, across all 6 pillars and talk with parents about their child's wellbeing at home as well as school.

As well as the Complete Human Strategy half termly check in points, children are screened for wellbeing twice yearly with ImpactEd. This allows us to compare levels of wellbeing across classes, year groups and schools, and flags issues to school staff. It also enables us to spot trends across our family of schools, and look for support interventions or staff development at the appropriate level. We are able to compare the wellbeing of our children with children nationally against the ImpactEd benchmark.

Each year we align our ImpactEd research into children's wellbeing with other variables to look at the correlation between, for example, attendance, agency and confidence in reading and learning.

Looking after our families

Every ASSET school has a family liaison officer that works closely with families to support their wellbeing and that of their children.

Our "ASSET Village" approach to community ensures that we connect to parents, families and the wider community around our schools and across Suffolk, seeking partnerships that help our schools flourish, encouraging volunteers to create new opportunities, ensuring our schools offer activities outside the school day and that parents and families are signposted to sources of support.

Complete Human Strategy Leads send half termly check-ins home to families too, encouraging parents and carers to reflect on one of the CHS pillars in their own space.

If parents identify wellbeing needs, our support website directs them to local sources of support, and our trained family liaison officers offer the chance to go deeper through the full CHS diagnostic to identify what might underpin stress.

Interested in the CHS in your school - hope over to our sister site here: www.completehumanstrategy.co.uk

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