Wellbeing

Mental Health in Primary Schools Project Update

Over the course of the year, Holy Rosary have been involved in the roll out of the MHiPS project. Christine and Michaela attended professional development days at the beginning of the year to learn about the project and have worked with MHiPS throughout the semester through online communities. 

MHiPS is not a program or framework which we just adopt and implement. Rather, it has been a series of professional learning experiences designed to enable us to review, plan and implement what mental health and wellbeing looks like at Holy Rosary. Through the MHiPS staff and online communities, we have been able to reflect on what we are already doing, what’s missing, and plan for what we want to take place. This includes designing a Wellbeing referral process. 

Our Wellbeing referral process guides teachers through the process they should follow when they have concerns about a student’s mental health or wellbeing. Any concerns that you may have about your child’s mental health and wellbeing should be shared with your child’s classroom teacher as the first point of call. This is important as teachers can then share insights from the classroom  perspective and provide information about certain things that may or may not be happening at school. From there, the teacher may then make a referral to the Wellbeing Team. 

We have compiled a bank of screening tools that can be used, with parent permission, to gather further information about a student's mental health and wellbeing. This information can be used to guide interventions and possible referrals to external allied health services. 

Your child’s mental health and wellbeing are of utmost importance, so please speak to your child’s teacher if you have any concerns.

Book of the Week

The Brain Forest

The Brain Forest is written by Sandhya Menon, a paediatric psychologist who works with children in Melbourne. She has written a fantastic book about all the ways that brains can be different. It is a great introduction into the world of neurodiversity.  It helps people to understand neurodiversities such as ADHD, ASD and Dyslexia (to name a few) and how we can be more inclusive in our world. We have this book in our library if you would like to borrow it.