Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) Service

The SEMH service aims to:

• Support whole school improvement in provision for SEMH through intentional promotion of social and emotional competence.
• Provide support and expertise around individual children through a comprehensive and systematic Assess, Plan, Do, Review process.
• Improve coping and resilience – we all have SEMH needs.
• Reduce need and therefore pressure on specialist SEND Services.
• Support schools to successfully prepare children for the next stage in their education.

Our offer:

• Four locality teams: East, Outer West, North, Inner West, which include:
  • 2 Locality Specialist Teachers
  • 2 or 3 Inclusion Support Workers
  • Dedicated Educational Psychologist and Trainee EP support into each locality team
• Point of contact, scheduled visits, regular check in, no referral form.
• Psychology based training programme for all staff, available to schools, LA teams.
• SEMH Projects: Reading, Music, Collaborative Problem Solving, Early Years Solution Oriented Problem Solving.
• SEMH Profile – to provide consistency of approach to work with individual children.

At present, advice, guidance and, where agreed, short-term support can be given from statutory school age (reception) up to the end year 7; the team will begin offering a service to staff working with children in year 8 from September 2025. Schools can discuss children they think will benefit from the service with their named SEMH Team member and where appropriate, consent for involvement will be sought from parents. Children do not need an EHCP to access support.

Case studies demonstrating the models of working and impact of the SEMH service can be found on the Services to Schools website on the SEMH webpage.