Hi to all adoptive parents of secondary school age children!
I fear this is a bit of a missive!
Please can you share with me your advice/experiences of the additional emotional and welfare support that your children’s secondary school is providing post lockdown? I am looking to share all good ideas and suggestions with my children’s secondary school.
Sadly, I don’t think I’m the only adoptive parent disappointed with our children’s secondary school response to creating additional emotional and wellbeing support since returning to school last week. This is despite all the talk during the lockdown in the news, from politicians, the children’s commissioner and head teachers etc, concerning the importance of supporting ALL students with their emotional wellbeing on their return to school.
I have spoken to a few other adoptive parents and they have felt pretty much the same. It feels like there's an increased emphasis on behaviour and students complying with the rules. Examples of this have been student exclusions in the first few days back e.g. a student’s refusal to remove noise piercings and recolour pink hair back to a natural colour. A Letter from a head teacher complaining about poor support from parents relating to student compliance e.g. use of mobile phones in school and aggressive behaviour towards peers.
Another adoptive parent was telling me that she felt that it was same in September 2020, when her daughter returned to year 8 after the first lockdown i.e. there seemed to be little attention paid to her daughter’s emotional wellbeing. She was mightily relieved that her daughter’s year group bubble finally self-isolated in early December and never returned for the rest of term; her behaviour was dipping at school, which was in turn impacting on family life at home.
I'm sure there are some wonderfully creative and successful “pastoral” approaches that have been implemented in many secondary schools up and down the land. Please share them on this feed; so at least for those parents like myself that are concerned about the scant additional emotional and mental health support for our children, when we contact our schools we have something constructive and positive to share with them.
Thank you all in advance for your shared thoughts and advice.
Take care.
Simon