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Well-Being Services

'The school provides many opportunities for pupils’ personal development. Leaders ensure that pupils gain a greater awareness of their own physical and mental health needs. Staff in the therapeutic team provide useful therapies.' (Ofsted 2022)

Complementing the education and care elements of Meadows School are the Well-Being Services team.

Currently we offer;

  • Speech and Language Therapy (SaLT)
  • Counselling (individual)
  • CHOICES - emotional literacy
  • Psychology Support
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy - Skills for Emotions, People and Situations (STEPS)

Meadows School employs specialist staff to work alongside school staff and provide Well-Being Services.

Clinical Psychologist

Jo 

Jo is a Chartered Senior Psychologist. She has been qualified since 2003 and is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). She has worked for over 10 years in the local Child, Adolescent and Family Mental Health Service (CAMHs) which provides Tier 3 services. Jo undertakes psychological, emotional, cognitive and risk assessments with young people. She draws on a range of treatment modalities (behavioural, cognitive, psychodynamic and systemic) to inform her therapeutic practice (individual and group). She works with young people, parents and families. In addition she provides supervision to colleagues and to trainee clinical psychologists. Jo provides training to the Clinical Psychology Doctorate Training course and educational settings.

Jo works in Meadows School for 3 days a week. Her role includes;

  • Developing an understanding of a pupil's behaviour or difficulties by consulting with staff and/or observing students in structured and unstructured environments.
  • Supporting staff to plan effective strategies to support a pupil's social, emotional, behavioural and academic development.
  • Providing therapeutic interventions with individual pupils referred to her by colleagues.
  • Undertaking risk assessments and/or advises care pathways for risk if necessary.
  • Liaison with agencies to maintain and promote service provision in the pupil's home area.
  • Developing staff skills by providing training to the whole staff group.
  • Advising on how to evaluate pupils' overall well-being at the school.

Senior Counsellor and Clinical Supervisor

Sue 

Sue works within the well-being team as a counsellor. She is with us two mornings a week. She offers three sessions for individual student counselling. Students may be referred by their EHCP, link worker, key stage lead or by themselves. Counselling can be short or long term, based on the needs of the student.   

She also runs our emotional literacy and social skills group called Choices.  The group is co-facilitated by a member of school staff and has up to six students in it.  Students can access this for as long as they feel they need to.  Should a young person be offered either of these services, we will always inform the family (usually via the link worker). We will seek parental consent if we feel the young person is unable to give/not give this themselves. 

Sue also offers family support sessions to enable people at home to support the young person. This is offered at key stage 2 (as research suggests working with families is more effective than offering direct work to a young person of this age) or when a young person is felt to need support but does not want to access this themselves. Families can choose if they access this support in person or via the telephone; they can choose how often to have sessions and they can decide when to end these sessions. 

Sue provides training to staff as well as staff support sessions. Outside of Meadows, Sue provides training and supervision to other counsellors and school staff.

Sue works for Time2Talk, Children, Adolescents & Family Counselling Service. She has over 20 years' experience working with young people and families and has worked in clinic-based settings and other educational settings.  

Sue is an accredited member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. She is DBS checked to 'enhanced' level. 

Speech and Language Therapist

Helen 

Helen is a qualified Speech and Language Therapist who is registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT). Before joining Meadows school, Helen supported children with a wide range of speech, language and communication needs across preschool/nursery settings, mainstream primary schools and special primary and secondary schools. In this role she worked with a variety of speech and language diagnoses including Voice Disorders, Stammering, Selective Mutism and Social Communication Disorders. Helen enjoys working as part of a successful multi-disciplinary team, establishing good working relationships with parents/carers, school staff and other professionals to guide and support their knowledge and skills.

Speech and Language Therapist

Natalie

Natalie qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in 2006 and is registered with both the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Before joining Meadows School, Natalie worked across London and Kent in a range of different specialisms and treated individuals of all ages with speech and language difficulties. At Meadows School, Natalie works with both primary and secondary-aged students. Her role includes informal and formal communication assessment, providing 1:1 or group therapy for targeted communication difficulties, and working with teachers and the multi-disciplinary team to ensure how to best support pupils' communication skills in the classroom. A large area of Natalie's work focusses on supporting pupils develop their social communication skills and transferring these into school life to help aid learning and friendships.

 

Occupational Therapist

Tina

Tina qualified in 1999 from the School of Occupational Therapy in Copenhagen, Denmark and has worked in England since qualification. She has worked for many years in adult mental health, acute, forensic and community settings. She has held a number of leadership roles within the National Health Service and jointly worked on many service development initiatives including setting up an in-patient service for adults with autism and learning disability in the capacity as an operational manager. She has supervised colleagues from various disciplines, students and lead occupational therapy teams.

Tina started specialising in learning disability and autism in 2006 and has worked within this field since. She specialises as in occupational coaching, sensory integration and primitive reflexes which means focusing on a range of behaviours which may be an outcome of sensory processing difficulties and motor coordination difficulties which can cause barriers to learning and development. She focuses on the need of the child and how the needs can be met within the context of family life and school environments. She is also skilled in delivering teaching and training for families, school staff and other professionals.

Tina has completed her postgraduate training in Sensory Integration Training and is currently completing her advanced practitioner qualification. She is trained in the Assessment of Process and Motor skills (AMPS); she has completed Rhythmic Movement Therapy (RMT) for primitive reflexes and Quickshift music training.

Tina has also completed the Autism Diagnostic Observation Screening (ADOS) and is part of a larger team who assess and diagnose children with complex challenges in relation to ASD.

'Over the months they are at the school, pupils gradually improve their self-confidence. They start to look forward to their futures with optimism.' (Ofsted 2022)