Walsall Children's Services

The Well-Being Programme for Walsall Schools

"Since we started Well-Being, we’ve come up with a lot of things we want to change and a lot has moved forward. It’s opened up a dialogue where people are no longer frightened to speak up. And it has benefited the children too – we work better for them and better together, and the ethos of caring about people permeates the school.”
Chris Tye, Headteacher, Norfolk~

The Well-Being Programme addresses issues at a whole school level, setting preventative measures in place, rather than responding to symptoms. It is a sustainable process for staff and organisational development which adds value to and complements workplace counselling.

Worklife Support have developed Well-Being using models of best practice from across the country, including our highly successful pilot Well-Being project in partnership with Norfolk LEA.

Well-Being aims:

1. To make sustainable improvements in the well-being of all staff working in ducation
2. To promote supportive and well-informed managerial practice which actively develops healthy workplaces, focusing upon organizational progress
3. To enable staff as individuals and in groups to manage successfully the pressures they face
4. To use a range of evaluation methods in order to identify strengths and weaknesses, to measure progress systematically, to inform action taken as a consequence, and to establish effective means of achieving success in different contexts
5. To provide a means of networking information and research about best practice.

Staff working together

Crucially, Well-Being adopts a ‘bottom up’ approach, where staff themselves work together to determine the approach their school should take. This ensures ownership by staff and long-term sustainability of a healthy working and learning environment. Volunteer facilitators are recruited from each school and trained in how to bring people together and empower them to focus not only on what they would like to change, but how they will do it. It does this by the provision of a flexible, coherent and empowering support programme that includes resources, consultancy, training and development, and publications.

Supporting staff development

It encourages school and individual self evaluation and audit as a key process of implementing Well-Being and reviewing its effectiveness. It concentrates on encouraging staff in schools to think differently about working together, to encourage and promote effective communication and support, the promotion of emotional intelligence and personal and social development in education.

Making a difference

In conjunction with our EAP, Well-Being offers real benefits in terms of cost savings and improvements in school effectiveness and standards.

Proven positive outcomes include: