Trauma Informed School
"On average it takes a child 10 years to receive help for a mental health problem"
(The Centre for Mental Health 2015)
Oasis Academy Aspinal is officially a Trauma Informed School.
Our vision is to provide a safe space for everyone, whether you are a child, parent, member of the community or member of staff.
We aim to be a trauma informed school and a mentally healthy place. This means we want to support people before they develop mental health problems - to catch them as they are falling not as they have fallen. Towards this aim we strongly endorse the statement in the Government Green Paper December 2017 Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, “ There is evidence that appropriately-trained and supported staff such as teachers, school nurses, counsellors, and teaching assistants can achieve results comparable to those achieved by trained therapists in delivering a number of interventions addressing mild to moderate mental health problems (such as anxiety, conduct disorder, substance use disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder)”. We are appropriately training our school staff to take on this task.
To enable our school to fully support everyone, Mr Foster is a Certified Trauma and Mentally-Healthy Schools Practitioner.
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)?
Five are personal:
- Emotional abuse (humiliation / being sworn at / being put down / insulted)
- Emotional neglect (feeling unspecial / feeling not important / feeling not loved / not supported)
- Physical abuse (being pushed, grabbed, slapped, things thrown at you)
- Physical neglect (not enough to eat / dirty clothes)
- Sexual abuse)
Five are related to other family members:
- A family member is depressed / has a mental illness
- Loss of a parent or parental separation / divorce
- A family member being addicted to drugs / alcohol
- Witnessing domestic violence
- A family member in jail
As the number of ACEs increases, so does the likelihood of a child having:
- Learning difficulties
- Poor educational attainment
- Poor attendance
- Exhibiting violent behaviour
- Being given a diagnosis of ADHD or conduct disorder
With each additional ACE there is an increased risk of learning difficulties, obesity and becoming a serious violent offender by age 35
Fuller-Thompson, E and Lewis D (2015) The Relationship Between Early Adversities and Attention-Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder. Child Abuse & Neglect. Volume 47 Sept 2015 Pages 94-101
Should you wish to find out further information on how we are becoming a Trauma Informed School, please speak to a member of staff.