Supporting your mental health and well-being

As a personalised, relational and ethical provider, we believe that supporting your well-being and mental health during your training year is key to your progress and development as a trainee teacher.

Our aim is to provide you with a set of skills and tools to help you manage your own well-being and mental health during the training year and beyond, into your teaching career. Each trainee has a personal tutor who will be alongside you every step of the way. You will be in at least weekly contact with your personal tutor for on-going professional and personal support.

Formal support

• Qualified Mental Health First Aiders within our training team for 1:1 support. The MHFA’s are available every day from 9am-5pm and have a dedicated phone line.
• Termly Well-being Sessions, run by MHFAs where you can arrange a 1:1 meeting via skype meeting or face to face. These can be requested at any point even though we run them termly.
• Termly Well-being Surveys to check on how things are going – these are confidential and only Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA’s) have access.  If necessary, we follow up any survey where a call is required to discuss any concerns, all in confidence. 
• Education Support Partnership. Part charity and part social enterprise whose aim is to support people working in education to be at their best. The Education Support provides the following free benefits:

Information and Guidance:

• Management of work-life balance
• Handling Stress
• Managing disagreements at school
• Managing your time
• Relationships at work
• Managing difficult student behaviour

24/7 Telephone Support for personal and family issues including: 

• Emotional support over the telephone and for face to face counselling
• Family relationships
• Couples counselling
• Teenage children
• Bereavement
• Serious illness
• Divorce
• Substance/alcohol abuse
• Miscarriage
• Caring for elderly relatives
• Depression / Anxiety
• Domestic abuse

Financial and Legal issues

• General debt counselling
• Mortgage guidance
• Loans and overdrafts
• Wills and inheritance tax planning
• Personal taxation issues
• Divorce/partnership breakdowns
• Pensions
• General financial planning
• Redundancy/early retirement
• Investment guidance

Trainee Comments

" I found the wellbeing surveys were helpful for personal reflection, placements can become so consuming especially as I wanted to do everything I could to get the best experience, so having the time to fill these out and reflect on my own wellbeing was really important" (Trainee 19-20)

"The one to one support was really important to my wellbeing during my training year, having time to chat through what I was worrying about and make plans to help with this was so important for my own wellbeing. If I ever felt like I needed this I could easily email and arrange this or catch one of the team when in centre and they would always be more than happy to talk to me and help out.’" (Trainee 19-20)

"From the outset the SCITT well-being team were so supportive and approachable. After struggling with anxiety at university, I was feeling unsettled and nervous about starting SCITT, however after filling in an initial health questionnaire, the wellbeing team picked up on this and I was able to access this support after they approached me"

"The wellbeing team were only ever an email or call away, even for the smallest worries, these were quickly reassured and this helped me feel less worried about the small things as I knew I could reach out whenever"

"I was always impressed with how timely the team responded to me, even with the little worries such as a piece of paperwork that I would stress about. The team began to recognise that it was these little things that I let build up so the quick response always reassured me and I was able to be proactive with the worries"