Mental Health & Wellbeing

We hope that you are well and warm, enjoying special moments and lovely family time together over the winter months. We are writing to you to introduce ourselves and share some information about the Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader role here at Essex Heights. This role is currently shared by Con Papanicolaou and Carolyn Wilson. Con and Carolyn have had many years of teaching experience here at Essex Heights in various roles and are delighted to continue forging strong partnerships with our students and wider school community throughout 2026. 

This communication will hopefully clarify our roles as the Mental Health and Wellbeing Leaders. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader role is government driven, originally piloted in schools in 2020 and since has been growing in its implementation. The initiative is partnered with Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Education. 

This role includes but is not exclusive to:

• Supporting Staff to build a whole school approach to mental and emotional health literacy. 
• Building staff capacity to identify and respond to students with mental health concerns.
• Coordinating and overseeing student wellbeing programs (Respectful Relationships, The Resilience Project).
• Overseeing the Wellbeing Curriculum.
• Analysing and monitoring data (Student surveys, school absences, social and emotional learning). 

We work closely with our Principal Team – George Perini, Elisha Cotterell and Felicity O’Flynn – who are committed to providing ongoing support and resourcing for all students and families here at Essex Heights Primary School. Our Prin Team also manage our SSG meetings and Disability Inclusion (DI) Profile Meetings which help cater for these students. Working closely with the Prin team, we can also support the referral process for providing external support to our students when required. We also continue to work closely with Monash University to provide counselling for some of our students and are collaborating to run Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) groups in Term 3. We thank Kirtana Sekaran for her time and expertise in the smooth running of these programs. 

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Leaders help ensure that every student has the opportunity to feel safe, connected, included and ready to learn. The role strengthens the school's ability to promote wellbeing across the whole community while ensuring that students needing additional support are identified early and connected with the right services. In primary schools, this often means working closely with teachers, families and specialist staff so that wellbeing supports are coordinated and embedded into everyday school life.

We look forward to working with students, staff and families.

Kind regards,

Carolyn and Con