Over the past few years we have been working on gaining an accreditation to show that we are a mentally healthy school. We started working on this back in 2019 and on January 9^th 2023 after 2 failed submissions, we finally received the ‘Healthy young minds in Herts accreditation for emotional wellbeing and mental health awareness’.

The kitemark accreditation is a process and an on-going developmental journey for the school whereby different schools will be at different stages of their emotional wellbeing and mental health journey. For a school to be awarded with the Healthy Young Minds in Herts kitemark; they would need to demonstrate reflective practice with clear actions on how to develop their good practice and have a clear plan about how to mitigate any gaps.

Part of the award is to complete a self-review tool which is a document to support schools to develop their own whole school approach to improving mental health and emotional wellbeing.  As schools find themselves increasingly responding to the mental health difficulties of staff, parents and pupils, the whole school, early intervention approach has never been so needed.

Southfield is the 3^rd special school in Hertfordshire to receive the accreditation.

The staff and Governors are over the moon at receiving the accreditation and the recognition for all the hard work that they have put into receiving the accreditation.