Pastoral Care

Pastoral Support – Mental Health and Wellbeing

Fairfield Primary School promotes and supports the social, emotional and mental wellbeing of children and families in many ways.

Pastoral staff work closely together to ensure that our Nurture Group provides an inclusive learning space within the Nurture Group Principles. They also liaise with the school SENDCo, teaching staff and parents/carers to identify children, using the Boxall Profile, who may benefit from learning within the Nurture Group.

As a Stonewall Champion School, Fairfield is committed to promoting diversity, working in partnership with Cockermouth School, the Mermaids charity and Barnardo’s to ensure everyone in our school community is included in learning and events.

Mental health and wellbeing is a high priority for Fairfield and, as well as offering a Nurture Group and 1:1 pastoral support, we also benefit from staff members trained in mental health first aid. The KidSafe programme is delivered throughout years 1, 3 and 5 and the Pastoral lead works closely with the PSHE lead to ensure all pupils receive an age-appropriate education to develop their resilience and wellbeing.

If you have any queries about our pastoral offer, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Emily Clarke

Pastoral Lead

Boxall Profile

The Boxall Profile is an assessment of a child’s social and emotional aptitudes. It was developed through many years of research by Educational Psychologist, Marjorie Boxall and has been used widely in schools and for research for over 20 years.

The profile has its base in Attachment Theory and allows an insight into a specific child’s behaviour and enables planning for teaching, taking into account specific strengths and weaknesses.

At Fairfield, we use the Boxall Profile as part of our toolkit to develop an holistic understanding of each child. All children are assessed once a year, during the summer term, to add an understanding of the child’s social and emotional wellbeing to the academic results we track.

The Boxall Profile is also used to identify children’s strengths and areas for development within Nurture Group. This allows us to target pastoral support within Nurture Group more effectively, as well as measure a child’s progress towards a particular goal.

Children who access Nurture Group support are assessed using the Boxall Profile termly, the results of which inform the following term’s planning to meet the needs of each individual child.

Although the Boxall Profile is a useful tool for identifying strengths and areas for development, the views of parents/carers, teaching staff and, most importantly, the children themselves are also taken into consideration both within classrooms and when accessing support such as Nurture Group.

If you have any questions about the use of the Boxall Profile, please contact the Pastoral Lead, Emily Clarke.