ELSA & Rainbows

ELSA

ELSA stands for Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. In schools, there will always be children facing life challenges.  These situations and the emotions that follow can detract their ability to engage with learning effectively - our ELSA’s in school help our children get through these struggling times.

We are very lucky to have two fully trained ELSA’s in our school, Ms Moy and Ms Johnson. They have both been trained by Educational Psychologists to plan and deliver programmes of support for children who are experiencing temporary or longer term emotional needs. 

The majority of ELSA work in school is delivered on an individual basis and sessions are based in our Rainbow Room, a calm, welcoming, safe space for the children to feel supported and nurtured. The sessions are fun and use a range of activities such as games, role-play or therapeutic activities such as mindfulness or arts and crafts.  

ELSA sessions aim to provide support for a range of emotional needs such as self-esteem, social skills, anger management and recognising emotions. Mrs Harrington and Ms Moy establish a warm, respectful relationship with children and provide a reflective space where they are able to share their thoughts and feelings honestly.

Children are usually referred to ELSA by the class teacher or the SENDCo. This will always be done in liaison with parents. We understand that some children may display different behaviours at home than at school, and welcome parental concerns to be shared with the class teacher. Every half term, teachers meet with the ELSAs and SENDCo to discuss referrals and identify and prioritise which children require the six-week programme. Targets are then set and discussed with parents and reviewed after the six-week programme has finished.

Rainbow

Rainbows Bereavement Support

Rainbows is a programme that fosters emotional healing among children who are grieving a death, or any other significant loss in their lives. At St Anne’s, we have a trained Rainbows facilitator who delivers planned programmes to peer support groups of children who may have suffered different losses in their lives. The children are able to share their feelings in a secure environment, with other children in the group, with our caring and compassionate trained adult. Confidentiality is kept at all times unless a child is at risk. The Rainbows groups strictly adhere to the school’s safeguarding policies and procedures. Children have said that Rainbows has helped them with how to deal with the anger they feel and how it is important to share how they are feeling and that they felt more confident and less worried about things.

Class teachers will approach parents if they feel this programme would support a particular child. Parents are also very welcome to approach the class teacher or our SENDCo (Mrs Smith) if they believe Rainbows would benefit their child. 

Please visit the Rainbows website (link below) for more details.  

What we do. - Rainbows Bereavement Support GB (rainbowsgb.org)