CORC support for the mental health and emotional wellbeing in schools and colleges in Jersey
We were really pleased to have an opportunity to carry out a thorough and evidence-led approach to improving pupil mental health and wellbeing support in Jersey. We tailored CORC and Anna Freud Centre (AFC) frameworks and measurement approaches to the Jersey context to develop a structured (and feasible) way to capture and combine the insights of pupils, parents, school staff, school leaders and other supporting professionals (health, care etc) about need, and what was needed.
We share these here in outline to stimulate others’ thinking about how some or all of these tools and approaches could add value to review of planning of support in other contexts. Bringing together these different types of information and different perspectives provided our team with a strong evidentiary base specific to Jersey. We were able to analyse this and consider it alongside wider research and evaluation to generate a set of recommendations for the Government of Jersey, who are committed to supporting improvement in this area.
At the beginning of our independent review of mental health support and provision in Jersey schools, members of the project team spoke with parents, with pupils and with professionals who worked to support pupil wellbeing across the island. They also explored findings from a recent Jersey-wide pupil health and behaviours survey and spoke with schools. All of which provided a rich picture of the environment of support for mental health and wellbeing in education. Inevitably, clear areas of improvement emerged from this, alongside a range of examples of good practice.
Approaches to pupil mental health and wellbeing varied across the 42 primary and secondary schools and colleges on the island. There was a common desire from professionals, parents and carers, and pupils to make approaches both consistent and of good quality. Working closely with the AFC Schools Team, the CORC team established a clear and robust plan to review support and provision. Collated school self-reviews, action plans and staff surveys along with information obtained through meetings with key staff, parents and young people and a best practice evidence review were used to inform our findings.
We reported our findings and set out a series of recommendations for local commissioner to support future improvement. We provided a competency framework and outline training plan for use on the Island, and an audit framework for reviewing and measuring school progress in supporting mental and emotional wellbeing.
The Government of Jersey is now in the process of using our findings and recommendations to prioritise and plan developments to the Jersey-wide approach to pupil mental health and wellbeing. Over the summer period the AFC Schools Team have already been commissioned to deliver initial aspects of the proposed staff training plan.
For CORC, this project has allowed us to demonstrate the benefits of implementing a self-review and staff survey across a diverse range of education providers; providing a data-led approach to determining improvements. We believe that this approach offers significant potential benefit for local authorities beyond Jersey and as such we are looking forward to developing our support in other geographical areas.
If you are interested to hear more about this approach and its associated benefits, please get in touch: corc@annafreud.org