School is temporarily closed following an instruction by the Department for Education, due to RAAC being in existence. Further details can be found in our letter to parents dated 01/09/2023 found on our letters / newsletters page. Please bear with us whilst we work through the detail and make the necessary arrangements to cause the least disruption to our staff and pupils. We are working very hard to make emergency arrangements and will issue further updates as soon as we are able. If you have an urgent RAAC enquiry please email raac@bwvet.com. If your query is relating to a student in the school, our school phone number of 0191 4105857 can still be reached, as phones are being diverted. Thankyou.
Further Information
1 Alerts

St Benet's Catholic Primary School

Ouston, Chester-le-Street, Co Durham

Home / SEND / Support for Emotional & Social Development

Support for Emotional & Social Development

We care deeply about all of our children here at St Benet’s. When children seem upset or anxious, we offer excellent pastoral support. This may be in the form of speaking to an adult in school and discussing the area of concern for the child and offer some support or suggestions to solve the problems. When children are upset more frequently for reasons which may be school or home based, we regularly chat with them to see how they are feeling. We keep parents informed and encourage parents to let us know when children are upset about something at home. We also have a Rainbows group which is a bereavement and counselling session for children struggling with emotions such as grief or anxiety as the result of a parental separation or death.

For children requiring additional social support, we have a number of small intervention groups happening in school including Socially Speaking, Friendship Formula and Time to Talk. These groups are arranged by Miss Loughlin, our SENCO, and are led by teachers or teaching assistants during curriculum time. They happen across the year with chosen children who we believe would benefit from such social intervention programs.

We are a very caring school with an extremely loving ethos and we ensure that every child’s needs are met as far as possible, we consult with a wide range of agencies and partnerships to ensure the Emotional and Social Development needs of all children including those with SEN are met. Inspired by Catholic values, staff believe that high self-esteem is crucial and aim to support and promote the emotional wellbeing of all children. We have a Personal, Social & Health Education programme linked to our weekly Statements to live by. On a daily basis the class teacher is responsible for the pastoral and social care of every child in their class, therefore this would be the parents’ first point of contact should further advice or support is required.

At St Benet’s we have a School Chaplain; Mrs Angela Sammut, who works with the children to provide an additional layer of pastoral care. We also offer a variety of opportunities for children to develop social and leadership skills through a range of Pupil Voice groups, such as the School Council, the Mini-Police, Mini-Vinnies and the E-Cadets.

As a school we have a very positive approach to all types of behaviour with a clear reward system that is followed by all staff and pupils using both the allocation of House Points and our Good To Be Green programme.

We will not tolerate any form of bullying and we have a clear anti-bullying policy in place.

Please refer to the Behaviour Policy and Anti-bullying Policy, which you can find in the School Policies section of our website.