Your child’s form-tutor is your first point of contact at Queens’ for pastoral and academic support for your child. A Form Tutor’s role is central in both caring for students and, crucially, monitoring their progress both academically and socially; encouraging involvement, commitment, and high standards of work and behaviour. The Form Tutor should be active in looking after the interests of the “whole child”. The relationship between a form tutor and tutee is one of the most important in the school.

Your child’s Director of Learning provides leadership to the year group by co-ordinating and supporting the academic progress and personal development of the students.

Your child's Student Support Manager supports the year group by ensuring that all students are safe and well and recognised and valued as individuals.

Matron is available to support young people with a range of wellbeing needs that centre on health and physiological wellbeing.

Sometimes it is appropriate for the student support team to foster a relationship between students so that they can support one another. More often than not this is a student from an older year group supporting those lower down the school. The needs of the student needing support are usually ‘low level’ and we feel that they benefit from hearing from another individual closer to their age who may have experienced similar issues.

If the needs of a child are slightly more significant and require an adult to support them, the student support team will work to develop a mentoring partnership between a student and their chosen adult in the school. This mentoring will normally take place once a week but can be on a needs basis, and staff mentoring is usually appropriate for students whose academic studies or social wellbeing are beginning to affect their happiness or wellbeing.

At Queens’, we utilise the service of external counsellors through Safe Space who hold weekly specialist sessions with students. This is a confidential, targeted therapy service to support students with significantly poor emotional or psychological wellbeing.

YC Hertfordshire is a service which provides youth work projects and programmes, information, advice, guidance, work related learning, outdoor education and support for young people. Our in-school Personal Advisor can be accessed via the Student Support Team.

An external agency that supports students with a broad spectrum of wellbeing needs. It can be accessed by seeking a referral from a GP, or in some cases a referral from a member of the pastoral team at school. In order to support students completely, it is essential that school is aware of any referral that has been made to CAMHS so that we can work together to support the young person.

Occasionally, a young person’s wellbeing can be poor enough for them to be unable to attend school. The ESTMA team supports young people who are unable to attend school temporarily because of medical reasons, whether that be emotional, psychological or physical. The teams work closely with the school to minimise the disruption to the child’s education and to support their reintegration as soon as possible. As well as schools the team works with parents, the young people and other professionals to ensure children and young people’s education continues as normally as possible

Your GP can refer you to local mental health services. The following links may also be helpful for those seeking professional help with their mental health:

• Signpost
• Kooth