Social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs are a type of special educational need in which children and young people have severe difficulties in managing their emotions and behaviour. They often experience:

• difficulties with building and maintaining relationships with others;

• managing their feelings and response to situations;

• and feel anxious and misunderstood within the school environment.

All staff need to take responsibility for identifying young people who may be experiencing SEMH difficulties, as class teachers and form tutors are well placed to spot needs early.

A graduated approach helps to recognise if this group of children and young people require selected or targeted support to meet their emotional health and wellbeing needs, in addition to the universal support already delivered through a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing, such as Emotionally Friendly Settings (which is available through Bury’s Mental Health Support Team offer).

If children and young people experience anxiety within the school environment for an extended period of time this can begin to impact their attendance. Information about Bury’s Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA) support can be found here and is based on early identification and intervention. For children and young people who have experienced prolonged anxiety, or have been unable to attend school for a long period of time, it is essential their wellbeing is prioritised, please see the Barriers to Education resource for supporting neurodiverse young people.

Getting Risk Support. Children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) may display risky behaviours and/or be more vulnerable to risk than the wider population. This may include behaviours that are harmful to themselves (e.g. ‘masking’ for prolonged periods of time, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders) or to others (e.g. distressed behaviours, extremism, inappropriate sexual behaviours) and it is essential we work collaboratively to keep children and young people safe in school and the wider community; the Getting Risk Support section of this toolkit provides further guidance.

Strategies are organised under three headings using the Thrive Framework:

• Getting Advice (Adjustments in the Classroom)

• Getting Help (Targeted/ Group Interventions)

• Getting More Help (Specialist or 1:1 Interventions)

Strategies are suggestions and not a tick list and it should be the case that some children just need the first section and others need the first two and others need all three.

Hyperlinks have been included to make it easy to locate information about suggested approaches and interventions. The intervention Overview page details information and costings for each intervention per Key Stage.