Bristol Wellbeing Conference

Keynote Speakers

Professor Katherine Weare (Emeritus Professor at the University of Southampton) and Dr Paul Flaxman (Senior Lecturer in Occupational Psychology at City University, London) will present on cutting-edge research and practice around how best to promote, enhance and support the psychological wellbeing of children and young people of staff and the wider school community. Research has shown that optimising staff-effectiveness in the workplace is best address by enhancing staff wellbeing.

The workshops

Katherine Weare:  Mindfulness in schools

This workshop introduces delegates to the use of mindfulness in schools. As well as focusing on some experiential mindfulness-based activities, the workshop includes discussion about the current evidence-base around the use of mindfulness in schools.

Julie Coulthard and Sonia Goddard:  Using the Healthy School Standards

A whole-school approach to developing Emotional Health and Wellbeing: Using the Healthy Schools Standards as a guiding framework, this workshop explores:

• Expectations of best practice for Emotional Health and Wellbeing in schools, through a whole-school approach
• Practical tools to tailor and target emotional health and wellbeing interventions implemented in school
• A practical framework which supports planning and achieving outcomes for behaviour change and which helps schools to demonstrate the impact of interventions used.

Stuart Melvin and Sarah Melia Anxiety: friend or foe; fight or flight:

This workshop addresses the following key questions and issues:

• Fears are a normal and natural part of life. They are part of our evolution as a species. So, when does anxiety become a problem (as to the sufferer there is no such thing as an abnormal fear)?
• When is anxiety actually beneficial to the individual?
• Why do some children develop anxiety problems and what are the risk and resilience factors? • What is the evidence-based for how we might support children in managing their anxieties in schools

Sue Stirling: Auditing your school’s wellbeing, an approach based on the Weare (2015) whole-school wellbeing framework:

This workshop aims to enable attendees to use an auditing tool, developed by the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and informed by Professor Katherine Weare’s whole-school wellbeing framework, to audit their own school’s current wellbeing situation and practices, as well as the impact of those practices. Delegates attending this workshop should leave with a basic understanding of how to use this very newly published and comprehensive tool to inform a school-wide wellbeing strategy.

There will be opportunities to attend several workshops in addition to discussion groups following a workshop to facilitate discussions around the topic.