In schools, ELSA stands for Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. ELSA support in schools is a project designed to help schools support the emotional needs of their pupils.
ELSA acknowledges that children and young people learn best when they feel happier and their emotional needs are being addressed.
The initiative was developed and supported by educational psychologists who used knowledge of how children develop socially and emotionally and apply this knowledge to the needs of pupils.
The role title of ELSA may only be taken by someone who:
Has attended a full ELSA training course.
Regularly attends supervision groups led by educational psychologists.
Currently, are developing bespoke programmes to support the emotional needs of children in their school.
Mrs Ayrey, our teaching assistant at St. Paul’s, has qualified as our ELSA in school. She is trained to plan and deliver programmes of support to pupils who may be experiencing temporary or long term additional emotional needs.
She works with identified pupils on an individual basis and in group sessions as appropriate, for example, when working on social skills and friendship skills.
Mrs Ayrey receives support and supervision from educational psychologists, and reports to the headteacher, Mr Eccleston and SENDCo, Mrs Oaten in school. As a team, we identify and prioritse children who would benefit from the support of an ELSA.
Once a child is identified, we carefully look at the kind of emotional support that they would benefit from and what areas Mrs Ayrey can work on them with. These priorities can then set the aims of the programme which can also act as individual aims for children.
Working on things that are personal to a child are likely to make the impact of the programme more successful.
There are a lot of emotional skills that ELSA can help with, including:
Social Skills
Bereavement
Social Situations
Therapeutic Stories
Anger Management
Self-esteem
Real-life problem-solving skills
Friendship
Sessions will typically happen once a week across the length of a term or half-term and last between half an hour and an hour. During a session, Mrs Ayrey will:
Check how the child is and how they have been feeling for the past week.
Review the content that was covered in the last session and see if any of the information needs to be revisited.
Introduce new content through engaging games and activities.
End the session in a way that helps the child to adjust to going back to class.
We recognise that not all changes will happen quickly, and one programme may not be able to meet all the needs that a child has. So when planning the work that will go into a programme we are aware of what aims we want to target.
The Head Teacher has ensured that teaching is consistently good and pupils’ progress is tracked carefully.
