Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools (WAMHS)

At Ickburgh School, we are committed to improving support for our students' emotional and mental wellbeing, and therefore are excited to be working with the Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools (WAMHS) initiative. This has been set up by the CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) Alliance to help schools help their pupils. Hackney Education also supports this work in a number of ways. We have a CAMHS link worker who comes to school regularly to support school staff & pupils. Our CAMHS link worker helps us to think about our students’ needs in school, how to best support them, and how to refer them to specialist services if they need more help. This might mean school staff discussing pupils with the CAMHS link worker to decide what help needs to be given. The CAMHS link worker also advises school about how to make school a success for all our pupils – this is called a ‘whole school approach’.
 
At Ickburgh School we also have help from another CAMHS team working with schools, the Mental Health Support Team (MHST). In addition to supporting the whole school work they will be able to offer direct support to pupils and their parents/carers when having problems with their emotional wellbeing. By direct support we mean, taking part in a group or having some sessions with a CAMHS worker. With your agreement it maybe helpful if you can join some meetings with the CAMHS worker.