Guest speaker: Weaving wellbeing into classroom practice

Introducing guest speaker: Alison Waterhouse

Alison has worked with children with additional educational needs for the past 25 years in both mainstream and the private sector. Initially, she trained as a special needs teacher and has worked in a variety of schools and educational settings.

Alison set up and developed an independent therapeutic special school, gaining full DfES registration and a reputation for excellence within the fields of education and therapeutic work. Alison then went on to act as an educational consultant for an independent therapeutic fostering agency, overseeing the education of children placed within their care. She developed a range of training packages for foster carers and staff. Alison returned to work in a large mainstream primary school as SENCO and teacher in charge of the social and emotional wellbeing of the whole school community. This involved working with children and young people, supporting and working with parents, coaching and mentoring staff including work discussion groups for TAs and team leaders.

Alison now works as an educational psychotherapist and wellbeing adviser for schools. She has been involved in staff training for Young Minds, worked with the schools engagement team at the Anna Freud Centre and works as an adviser for the Optimus Wellbeing Schools Award.

For the past 10 years, Alison has been developing and researching the impact of the the Circles for Learning Project. Circles for Learning focuses on supporting schools develop the knowledge and understanding of teachers around mental health and wellbeing as well as delivering a unique wellbeing project to classrooms. The project focuses on developing the five essential areas that lay positive foundations for emotional wellbeing by bringing together a parent and their young child with a class of KS1-KS3 pupils once a month for a whole year. This amazing experience allows children to watch relationships as they unfold, observe and explore emotions and their link to thinking and behaviour, see learning in action and understand how our sense of self develops. All the areas that research has shown underpin positive mental health and wellbeing.