Strategic leadership courses for new and experienced Senior Mental Health Leads. Bridge the gap between initial learning and long-term practice with our supported 90-day implementation framework.
Leading Strategic Change Across Your Setting
Developing a whole-school or college mental health approach requires clear boundaries, shared responsibility, and realistic action planning. Our core leadership courses move beyond isolated activities, giving you the structured tools needed to align mental health with safeguarding, SEND, attendance, behaviour, and learning.
Rather than positioning one person as responsible for every aspect of wellbeing, these courses empower you to map shared leadership, evaluate existing practice through a trauma-informed lens, and build a clear pathway for sustainable improvement.
Our 4-Part Learning & Implementation Model
Both main courses follow the same supported structure, with activities and discussion adapted to your starting point:
1 Interactive Training Day: Deep-dive facilitated training featuring anonymised case studies, collaborative discussion, and practical audit tools adapted for primary, secondary, FE, special schools, and alternative provision.
A Copy of the Course Textbook: Includes Trauma-Informed Approaches in Schools: A Guide for Senior Mental Health Leads by Jessica Parker and Gemma Fieldsend to support ongoing reference and policy development.
An Individual 90-Day Action Plan: Formulate a targeted, achievable priority during the training day, backed by self-review frameworks and role-mapping tools.
A 2-Hour Reflective Follow-Up Session: Reconvene online approximately three months later to evaluate implementation, work through barriers and resistance, and protect your leadership capacity and wellbeing.
Choose the Course Designed for Your Experience
Our core courses are alternative entry points designed for different stages of leadership—you do not need to complete Course 1 before taking Course 2.
Target Audience: Newly appointed SMHLs or those stepping into an existing SMHL role, leaders taking on mental health responsibilities for the first time, and established leads without structured prior preparation. Pastoral, safeguarding, or inclusion leaders helping to establish the approach are also welcome.
What You Will Explore:
Role, Scope & Shared Responsibility: Clarify role boundaries, map responsibilities, and establish effective collaboration with senior leaders, DSLs, SENCOs, attendance teams, and external partners.
Trauma-Informed Foundations: Apply principles of safety, trust, relationships, regulation, voice, and choice to everyday routines, communication, and environments.
Whole-Setting Action Planning: Map existing provision, gather pupil, staff, and family perspectives, and set achievable 90-day priorities aligned with DfE SMHL learning outcomes.
Key Deliverables: An initial setting self-review, a role and responsibilities map, and a focused 90-day action plan.
Target Audience: Established SMHLs - including those who previously completed DfE-funded training or trained with another provider - and experienced leaders whose setting, responsibilities, or priorities have evolved.
What You Will Explore:
Evaluating Established Provision: Audit current practice to identify what is embedded, what has drifted, and whose needs or experiences may be overlooked.
Policy, Culture & Alignment: Examine how mental health, safeguarding, SEND, behaviour, and attendance fit together to identify and address practices that unintentionally shame or exclude.
Sustaining Change & Leadership Capacity: Navigate resistance, balance competing priorities, and use proportionate evidence to demonstrate meaningful impact while protecting your own wellbeing and leadership capacity.
Key Deliverables: A refreshed setting self-review, a focused policy or practice review, and a 90-day improvement plan.
