Here at St Stephen’s Infant School, we pride ourselves on promoting the emotional wellbeing and mental health of our pupils. With that in mind we are proud to be an ELSA school. The ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) intervention was originally developed within Southampton, then Hampshire, by Sheila Burton, Educational Psychologist. It was designed to build the capacity of schools to support the emotional needs of their pupils from within their own resources. This is achieved by training teaching assistants to develop and deliver individualised support programmes to meet the emotional needs of children and teenagers in their care. It recognises that children learn better and are happier in school if their emotional needs are also addressed. This intervention is now widely implemented by educational psychologists across Britain.

Mrs Heeley is our ELSA, she has attended  a full ELSA training course delivered by fully qualified educational psychologists. She is currently delivering bespoke programmes of support to individual pupils and sometimes small groups.