National & Local Updates

Dog's Trust have a 'Be Dog Smart' programme which focusses on Safe Behaviour Around Dogs, and every year they work with hundreds of schools, offering free workshops and assemblies.

They aim to harness safe, loving relationships between children and dogs, by encouraging them to adopt safe and kind behaviours towards their canine friends. The workshops are engaging and interactive, designed to compliment areas of the curriculum and generally support classroom learning.

The workshops are run by trained and experienced Education and Community Officers who aim to provide options for schools to best suit their environments, timetables, and capacity to facilitate external guests.

For more information and to book, contact your local Education and Community Officer via learnwithdogstrust.org.uk or contact sarah.saunders@dogstrust.org.uk.

There are also a range of downloadable resources for early years teachers - https://www.learnwithdogstrust.org.uk/resources/#age-7-11.

Grants of £1,200 are still available to access continuing professional development (CPD) for your school or college's mental health lead. If you haven't already done so, claim your grant this term and join the 15,000 schools and colleges that have already accessed a DfE quality assured senior mental health lead course. The training will develop your mental health lead's knowledge and practical skills to embed an effective whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing.

87 per cent of senior leads who competed the training in 2021-2022 said that it enabled them to plan or improve their approach, and 83 per cent said that they would recommend the course to others.

The training includes important topics to lead change in your setting, such as:

• Understanding and identifying mental health and wellbeing needs and monitoring the impact of support

• Approaches to plan and lead change aligned to the work of your DSL and SENCO

• Developing your universal and targeted support offer
• Engaging students/pupils and developing positive relationships with parents, families and carers.

Take five minutes to claim your training grant here. You can also use the grant to pay for supply cover while leads are engaged in learning and/or to pay for additional training or resources to help with implementing your approach. Choose from over 90 quality assured courses at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels, delivered on-line or face-to-face and tailored to the needs of your settings.

You can now also claim a 2nd grant hereif your trained mental health lead left your setting before fully developing your whole school or college approach.

Recently launched:

Access a new resource hub to help mental health leads embed a whole school or college approach to mental health & wellbeing. This has been developed with Anna Freud, in partnership with education representatives and mental health experts.

A new targeted mental wellbeing support toolkit is also available. This provides a practical guide and filterable tool to help schools and colleges review, refresh and develop effective targeted support for pupils and learners with social, emotional and mental health needs.

Sharing good practice blog series – senior leads tell us about the action they've taken to shape their approach by enabling student voice – read about this here

The Violence Against Woman and Girls programme is looking to co-design solutions to violence against women and girls with young people across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR). They will be co-creating resources, an education package and a bystander campaign to prevent sexual violence.

To create a fair opportunity for all, applications are welcomed from all of LLR. Please see attached the poster and application form.

If you'd like to be involved with this please fill out the attached application form explaining why your young people would be a great group to partake in the co-design session and return this to sharan.dhillon@leics.police.uk

The application deadline is on the 21.04.24 at 5pm.

The young people who participate will receive a £20 voucher, food and drinks at the co-design session as well as a certificate from the OPCC's office for their participation in the VAWG initiative. Furthermore, they will have an opportunity to join the Empowering Voices Making Choices oversight group to oversee the project at each stage of development. The organisations will receive a £1000 grant. Only six organisations will be successful, with a minimum of 6 young people per group and maximum of 10.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate contact the Violence Against Women and Girls Programme Lead for the OPCC, Sharan Dhillon - sharan.dhillon@leics.police.uk.