By now, schools should all have their mental health and wellbeing support plans sorted for September but, in many ways, the hard work is only just about to begin. In truth, no one really knows what we are about to face in terms of the mental health of our student population, and finding out which challenges will need the most - or the speediest - support is going to be tricky.

One thing I am clear about is that there will be more of a demand for schools to support wellbeing and mental health than ever before. Some of our students will have faced numerous challenges in the past six months: heightened loneliness; increased anxiety; parents made redundant or furloughed; family members being seriously ill; a shortage of food at home; students becoming young carers to siblings or parents; increased exposure to domestic violence; bereavement - the list could go on and on. For many, there has also been an abrupt end to counselling, therapy and mentoring schemes.

We are not going into September completely blind. Our triage started during the summer term through staff referrals and taking a number of other factors into account: what we started to notice in student approaches to remote learning (or their absence from engaging), parent emails, student chats via tutors/teachers/heads of year and safeguarding disclosures.

Our heads of year created a mental wellbeing and engagement spreadsheet, and asked staff to detail for each student information around level of engagement, lockdown fears and hopes, coping strategies and level of motivation.

Certain students were highlighted for a variety of safeguarding reasons and we made sure regular personal check-ins were happening to establish that all was OK with their wellbeing. In addition, students suffering from anxiety were identified and packs with activities were sent home to provide additional support.

But September will bring new challenges and new pupils needing our support. We believe a whole-school approach is essential to leave no cracks for pupils to fall between. And, as such, we have devised a three-stage approach that we believe can help us adapt quickly and fully to the challenges that arise. It works like this.

1. Reconnecting, rebuilding and reframing

Form tutors will be given podcasts, recorded by us during lockdown with students, as starters for discussions and then prompt questions will be used to host what we are calling Covid chats - essentially, structured conversations about the pandemic and lockdown. We recognise that it’s important we validate what has happened and share the collective experience.

In preparation for this, all staff have received compulsory continuing professional development around safeguarding, child protection and reintegrating pupils following closure. The objectives were to ensure that staff understood the spectrum of potential issues for pupils returning to school; were able to spot the signs of anxiety, trauma, grief and domestic abuse; were able to act to support pupils who are struggling with any of these issues and to know how to report concerns.

Tutors will also be given time to reconnect with their students and build trust, and reaffirm what are positive and healthy relationships in and out of school. Staff have been given a list of team-building exercises that can be done in a classroom or on the field, and these are to be spread out in the first two weeks of tutor time and run alongside the Covid chats.

Finally, we will be reframing what we value. Many staff and students will come out of lockdown having re-evaluated what’s important to them. What they value may have changed so, collectively, staff, students and parents will be finding our common values.

Once again, podcasts pre-recorded during lockdown with parents and students - in which we chatted about what we learned and would possibly value more post-Covid - will be shared as catalysts for discussions. The suggestion is that we capture one big “wall of gratitude” in the foyer of the school and mini walls of gratitude in classrooms and faculty areas. Students will be given a template heart (a different colour for each year group) and the students will write in what they now value, and whom and what they are grateful for.

As we are aware that there will be students who will want to use the special educational needs and disability support space for their learning, medical and psychological needs, we are running a parallel programme using the same resources that tutors will be using. That way, they don’t miss out but get the same diet of nurturing support, just in a safer and less threatening environment for them.

2. Assessment

We will be working closely with Performance Learning (an online assessment platform that improves cognitive and metacognitive skills) to deploy its emotional and behavioural skills assessment to every student within the first four weeks, to determine strengths and areas to improve. The assessment will help track each pupil’s attitude and approach to learning, their fears and concerns.

What is critical is that much of this data will also reveal information about their emotional wellbeing as they return to school. This, in turn, will deliver a personalised plan of action while providing the school’s wider leadership team and parents with a soft-copy report on the results of each assessment.

This personalised plan of action could highlight specific wellbeing difficulties the pupil might be experiencing post-Covid, from their sleep routine and self-esteem to levels of anxiety and stress relating to specific areas of their learning. This should enable us to make targeted interventions to help them get back on their feet.

3. Research

In the second half of the autumn term, we will be rolling out our own research to the degree to which we are a health-promoting school and seeing whether our offering is actually commensurate with the students’ needs. We will also evaluate whether adjustments need to be made to policies and strategies put into place post-Covid lockdown.

Our hope is that the research will involve seeing how other schools and institutions are handling mental health challenges in the wake of the lockdown.

We will also perform a school audit of the interventions we are putting in place and then conduct focus groups and surveys to gather student opinion on our interventions and whole-school plans.

The reasons for conducting this final stage of research is to ensure our interventions are considered relevant by our stakeholders and have impact, thus removing all barriers to learning and ensuring that success and positive wellbeing are inevitable.

Clare Erasmus is designated mental health lead at Brighton Hill Community School

This article originally appeared in the 28 August 2020 issue under the headline “What next for wellbeing in a post-Covid world?”