WELLBEING

Supporting children with social, emotional or mental health needs

Donna Gaywood, early years consultant, explains how a truly inclusive environment is dependent on all children feeling safe

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Set against the challenging backdrop of slowly recovering from a pandemic, there has been an increase in reported cases of poor adult mental health. The cost of living is rising, causing anxiety amongst many families; there is ongoing concern about the climate crisis and there is war in Europe. Children’s lives are inevitably being impacted. Children are experiencing anxiety, finding it hard to separate from their parents/ carers and are finding playing with their peers very challenging. For early years educators this presents increasing challenges, which can feel overwhelming.

How best to support children
There can be lots of reasons why children may experience social, emotional or mental health difficulties, but sometimes it is hard to pinpoint the cause. Whatever the reasons, it is not necessarily helpful trying to discover the ‘why’, but more productive to think about how best to support children to help them find their place in their early years community.

Looking after children who may become dysregulated, are very frightened or who are struggling to manage socially is extremely hard work, particularly when trying to adopt an attachment or relationship-based approach.

Small changes to everyday practice can help children who are feeling anxious and enable them to feel safer. Creating a calm environment is an important first step. You can review the space to ensure the setting is uncluttered, has natural light and work to reduce use of primary colours. Increasing natural colours and introducing plants has a calming effect on children, which sets a positive backdrop to other supportive interventions.

Almost without exception, children with social, emotional and mental health difficulties need to be in small groups to be able to manage, so whilst this may mean a complete change of structure and you might have to rethink your daily plans, it is a vital component to including all children.

Using a whole team approach, including parents, when supporting individual children with social, emotional and mental health needs, undoubtedly has a positive impact on all children in the setting. But sometimes, the strategies which are helpful for ‘most’ children will not always work or be effective. Underpinning ideas about how children operate may need unpicking, so you are able to respond positively to children who are experiencing difficulties in the early years setting. It can be challenging but it is a necessary aspect of developing provision for all children.

Knowing the limits
As with all things, there are limits to what educators can do when supporting children with social, emotional or mental health difficulties. Knowing where the limits are is important to maintain a clear focus, which in turn can reduce educator stress.

An early years educator’s role is to educate and care for a child, in place of a parent. Often early years educators have years of experience and a wealth of knowledge about child development, which is vital and observations of a child at play in an early years setting can be illuminating. However, it is only paediatricians, psychologists, psychiatrists and possibly specialist speech and language therapists who can diagnose children. Being clear about limits of the role releases the educator from having to have all the ’answers’ and allows them to do what they do best, which is make positive relationships with children and support them to integrate into a learning community.


FREE Behaviour Matters with Prioritising Children's Mental Health and Wellbeing


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Prioritising Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing (Alliance 2022)
£13.65 members, £19.50 non-members

Written in partnership with early years consultant, Donna Gaywood, the new Alliance online publication, Prioritising Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing, invites early years educators to reflect on the fundamentals of supporting children’s social, emotional and mental health needs and reassess their everyday practices.

When children start to demonstrate that they are beginning to have social, emotional or mental health issues, there may be a trigger which is causing them difficulty. Using close observation of the child at play may help educators to identify what that is; however, it can sometimes be hard to find these. The ABC system, as described in Behaviour Matters (Alliance 2016), offers a more focused observation tool to help unpick what might be happening for the child.

Order Prioritising Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing by 30 September 2022, to receive your free copy of Behaviour Matters.