Sheffield school awarded for its approach to mental health

This award 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 (mental health well being) 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, it said: “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 was the ‘substantial and varied’ support that it offers its staff, and support plans available for students were labelled as ‘robust’.

Editor's message: Thank you for reading this story. The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on our advertisers and thus our revenues. The Star is more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription to support our journalism. You can subscribe here www.thestar.co.uk/subscriptions for unlimited access to Sheffield news and information online. Every subscription helps us continue providing trusted, local journalism and campaign on your behalf for our city.