As a school, we are totally committed to ensuring our school community is a safe place to learn and work in we take our responsibility to protect and safeguard your welfare extremely seriously. We will listen to and take your concerns seriously and have a number of specialist staff who work to support you. These include our Heads of House, Learning Mentors, Inclusion Team and school nurse. If you are worried about anything, you may feel more comfortable speaking to your tutor, learning mentor or Head of House, but any member of staff is there to help.

There are many forums for you to discuss and raise issues around safety and wellbeing, such as the Student Wellbeing Group and The School Council and we urge you to make your voice heard by contributing to such groups.

Both students’ physical and mental wellbeing are priorities for us as a school, and we are fortunate to have a wide range of expertise and experience amongst our staff working in Student Support. Part of that support offer is our health and first aid provision, with regular drop in sessions being run during lunchtimes that students can either self-refer to or be referred to by staff.

We have a number of first aiders trained on site and a Student Welfare Officer who are available to offer both immediate medical care as well as working with families and the school to create medical and health support plans. All staff have training around first aid, diabetes and epi-pens and bespoke training and support is offered as required.

Parents are also able to access the school nurse service from Bath and North East Somerset Community Health and Care Services via http://bathneshealthandcare.nhs.uk/childrens/school-nursing/

How can you see or contact the School Nurse (pdf)

The following links and guides may help you with issues or concerns you may have:

• Staying safe online: Childline online safety
• Mental health: Young Minds is a mental health charity that has a useful website to you understand mental health issues.
• CAMHs Resoures: Lots of helpful resources here to help support your mental health and wellbeing
• Beat exam stress: Leaflet for children and young people on coping with examinations (Pdf, 0.8mb)
• Bullying: Wellsway School will not tolerate bullying. Every member of our school has the right to come to school without fear of being threatened, intimidated, mocked or abused. We all have a responsibility to make sure that bullying is not part of life at our school.  

What bullying is (and isn’t!)

Bullying:

• … goes on for a while and happens regularly
• … Is deliberate. the other person wants to hurt, humiliate or harm the target
• … Involves someone (or several people) who are stronger then the person being bullied

All three things have to happen together to be called bullying.

Bullying is not:

• a one off fight or argument
• a friend sometimes being nasty
• an argument with a friend

If you are being bullied, talk to your Head of House or Learning Mentor. Arrangements can be made for you to speak to a member of staff without making other students aware that this is being done. The sooner we know about a problem the quicker we are able to put in place appropriate intervention for all students involved and prevent bullying happening.