Case study – school 1

Here, a representative from one school shares how they have used the measurement framework as a 'one-stop-shop' to assess the mental health and wellbeing of its students.

Wellbeing Measurement Framework (WMF)

The WMF is a wellbeing measurement tool used extensively as part of our HeadStart Project for The National Lottery Community Fund, the learnings from which are feeding into #BeeWell.

The wellbeing measurement framework (WMF) allows us to routinely assess and monitor mental health/wellbeing and related aspects of young people’s lives via a single survey platform. It overcomes a downfall of our previous approach, in which we were using many different measures that were all administrated variably and then reported on and interpreted differently. The WMF provides a ‘one-stop-shop’.

Helping to allocate resource

We use the WMF feedback reports to help inform and plan future interventions designed to improve the wellbeing and mental health of our students. It helps us to recognise what areas of student mental health and well-being need to be focused on, areas that pupils appear to be struggling with, and we can use this knowledge to put the right interventions into place.

The WMF is also used as a confirmability tool  we match the data up with reports from teachers, what other demographic data or pupils’ personal data tells us, and with pupils’ own reports. There are groups of young people that are on certain school ‘radars’ and the surveys reassure and reinforce many of our concerns ensuring that the directions we are taking are the correct ones. The WMF also highlighted new student groups in need of additional support.

Enabling school staff to deliver support

We use the WMF alongside other data. Information pulled together from free school meals data which flags students at risk of suffering from mental health, social or wellbeing problems in later life, is compared and used alongside WMF data to check for consistency and to ensure nothing is being missed and no one is being overlooked.

We use the WMF as a monitoring tool. We monitor, each year, the movement and the direction of our students’ mental health. This enables us to tackle any emergent mental health difficulties among particular groups. As noted above, we can put interventions into place to support these and then use the WMF to monitor mental health thereafter to see if things have improved.

The WMF has helped to create an awareness with our staff about the state of our pupil mental health and wellbeing. It has helped to inform and educate them about how our pupils are feeling right now and the struggles they are dealing with. This helps staff to have a better understanding of how to help, support and deal with the pupils appropriately.