News

Renfrewshire’s Nurturing Relationships Approach (RNRA) is a relational and trauma informed approach to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. RNRA is grounded in a rich evidence base and has been found to positively impact on staff practice and the wellbeing of children and young people (Nolan, 2020). Positive relationships across the school community (parents/carers, children and young people and staff) and a focus on the development of resilient children and young people are considered some of the key features of whole-establishment nurturing approaches.

The toolkits have been created to support establishment self-evaluation and planning for improvement in the following areas:

• Pupil Voice: Pupil Voice RNRA v7 – FINAL
• Parental engagement: parental engagement RNRA toolkit
• Quality improvement: evidencing impact RNRA RAG

The continuums within these toolkits contain good practice examples which should be used in planning whole establishment nurturing approaches. Consideration of these continuums should be evidenced in establishment accreditation submissions (including action plans). These indicators will be referred to in scrutiny of accreditation submissions to determine progress in these key areas.

“REN10 is a network of people who work or volunteer in the Renfrewshire area. We have a variety of early help services for your mental health and wellbeing.”

Through the new website parents, carers and professionals can access a wide variety of help to support the mental health and wellbeing of their children and young people from the earliest stage.

Have a look here: REN10 – Renfrewshire Mental Health and Wellbeing Platform

Michael Harker has been the Principal Educational Psychologist of Renfrewshire Educational Psychology Service since 2011. Before that, he was the Depute Principal of the service for 10 years.

He retires this Christmas and will be sorely missed for his kind and compassionate leadership, creative thinking and great humour. We are looking forward to seeing where he channels his many talents in retirement, and know that he will keep himself busy with his two lovely grandchildren!

We will welcome Maura Kearney (currently Depute Principal EP in Glasgow) to our team as our new Principal EP in the new year.

REPS have developed two new digital leaflets in our Skills for Recovery series.

These leaflets are designed to offer support to parents and carers during periods of home learning (e.g. school closures and self-isolation).

The first leaflet offers some general advice about home learning. You can find it here.

The second leaflet offers some support for coping with our feelings when things become tricky. You can find it here

We are pleased to share our leaflet created to support parents and carers with sleep. These difficult times have affected our sleep for a number of reasons but there are things you can do to help yourself and your child. Please click the link below to download the PDF.

Your Child and Sleep leaflet

Skills for Recovery: new digital leaflets launched!

We are pleased to be able to share our new resources to support the wellbeing of young people (secondary), all parents/carers & all staff.

We have worked with Renfrewshire’s Health & Wellbeing Development Officer to adapt the RNRA Skills For Recovery programme to make it more easily accessible and relevant for parents and staff at this stage in the pandemic.

There are 6 digital leaflets (Microsoft Sways) in this new series.  We hope these leaflets will be shared widely with all education staff and wider communities. We continue to work on refining these resources to ensure they meet the needs arising. There is a link to a very short questionnaire at the end of each digital leaflet which you can use to let us know how useful they have been.

https://sway.office.com/pYwDb3dfzCoUOBlq?ref=Link&loc=play

Amy Nolan, a REPS EP and member of our RNRA coordinating team has produced a summary of her recent doctorate research: An evaluation of the impact of Renfrewshire’s Nurturing Relationships Approach.

You can read the summary here: RNRA summary for LA May 2020

Over the summer break, we are accepting referrals to our Coping During Covid Helpline directly from parents and carers. If you are worried about your own or your child’s wellbeing due to the impact of COVID-19, please get in touch.

Email us at reps@renfrewshire.gov.uk and someone will get in touch for further information so we can put you in touch with the right person.

We know that there is a lot of uncertainty at this time about nurseries and schools returning after the summer break, but unfortunately we are unable to provide any additional information or advice about this. Please continue to check Renfrewshire Council’s website, social media, and your child’s establishment’s communications for recent updates.