Outwood Academy City Recognised For 'Excelling’ In Mental Health Work
A Sheffield-based secondary school has been awarded Gold Status by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health Award.
This award, led by Carnegie School of Education and Minds Ahead CIC, ensures schools are using evidence-based approaches, aligned to the latest professional guidelines surrounding mental health.
The assessment report found that Outwood Academy City ‘presented a very strong profile of evidence that demonstrated they are excelling across all eight competencies of the School Mental Health Award.’
During its assessment, the Stradbroke Road-based academy was found to have ‘a robust, detailed and well-developed strategy in place’, which ‘underpins everything the Academy does in relation to MHWB from policy and processes to decision making around actions taken to address work-life balance issues.’
Andrew Downing, Principal at Outwood Academy City, said:
“We are absolutely delighted and proud to have been awarded Gold Status.
“At Outwood we believe in putting students first and this goes beyond just academically. We want to ensure the young people we teach are supported to be good citizens who are assets to the community, as well as being supported to achieve academically.
“To this aim, we want to make sure their mental health and wellbeing is looked after. We take immense pride in receiving this award and the hard work by our brilliant staff, especially our Lead on this, Julia Pinder.”
Within the assessment report is glowing praise of the academy’s work on building relationships with parents:
“Through lockdown and the barriers to face to face contact caused by Covid 19, the school has used virtual technology and social media extensively to maintain contact and relationships with families, holding fun challenges, putting together MHWB packages etc. There is a strong emphasis on trying to focus on the positives to come out of the pandemic; the Academy holds a motto of ‘come back stronger, stay better’.”
The academy’s active encouragement of student leadership was praised within the report as well as the ‘substantial and varied’ support that it offers its staff.
The support plans available for students were labelled as ‘robust’ and the academy’s success of being ‘able to turn around the attitudes and improve partnership working, leading to better outcomes for children’ was praised.
The academy’s support for its staff includes ‘access to a range of facilities to promote positive mental health and wellbeing, there is ongoing and open door access to HR support’ which the report labelled as ‘a strong case of good practice.’
Andrew added:
“We are happy that the support we offer to staff and students was praised, and it just further encourages us to press on with the same positive attitude that we have approached all our work.
“We simply want to help as many people as we can, and not just the children we teach or our staff, but in the local community as well.”
Professor Damien Page, Dean of Leeds Beckett’s Carnegie School of Education, said: “Achieving this award is not just recognition of a whole-school approach to mental health, it’s a recognition of the school’s commitment to improving the life chances of children.
“We’re truly proud to have worked with Outwood Academy City in this vital work and look forward to further collaboration.”
Nationally, more than 800+ schools have signed up to take part in the mental health award, with only 56 schools having achieved the Gold status so far.
Dean Johnstone, founder and CEO of Minds Ahead said: “This award shines a light on the excellent work schools are doing to promote mental health for their community of children and adults.
“It is thrilling and humbling to learn about Outwood Academy City and the many other schools engaged in the quality award process. I’d like to offer my congratulations on this deserved recognition.”