WHAT IS AN ELSA?

An ELSA is an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant trained by educational psychologists. ELSAs aim to help to ensure that your children feel happy in school and are reaching their potential educationally by identifying and reducing any barriers to learning.

ELSAs help children and young people to understand their emotions and respect the feelings of those around them. They provide a consistent private space, time and the opportunity for your children to think about their personal circumstances and how they manage them.

The  ELSA work is delivered either on an individual basis, or within a small group work as this may be more appropriate, especially in the areas of social and friendship skills.  Sessions are fun, we use a range of activities such as: games, role-play with puppets or arts and craft. 

In ELSA we aim to provide support for a wide range of emotional needs:

• Recognising emotions
• Self-esteem
• Social skills
• Friendship skills
• Anger management
• Loss and bereavement

How does ELSA work?

Children are usually referred for ELSA support by their class teacher, Senior Leaders, SENCo or by parents request.  The ELSAs meet each other regularly to discuss the referral forms and to identify and prioritise which children require the weekly sessions.  They then plan support sessions to facilitate the pupil in developing new skills and coping strategies that allow them to manage social and emotional demands more effectively.  These sessions run for 6 or 12 weeks depending on the intervention required.

Supporting - not fixing

Remember, ELSAs are not there to fix children's problems.  What we can do is provide emotional support.  We aim to establish a warm, respectful relationship with a pupil and to provide a reflective space where they are able to share honestly their thoughts and feelings.

It needs to be appreciated that change cannot necessarily be achieved rapidly and is dependent upon the context and complexity of the presenting issues.  For children with complex or long-term needs it is unrealistic to expect ELSA intervention to resolve all their difficulties, however support will be designed to target specific aspects of a child's need.  Training and development of ELSAs is an on-going process and wisdom is required to recognise when issues are beyond the level of expertise that could reasonably be expected of an ELSA.  However we can sign post you to outside support that maybe more suitable in complex cases.

ELSA Support at Avenue: Rainbow Room

At Avenue we also offer the children emotional support on a daily basis should they need it.  This could be because of family illness, divorce, separation anxiety, friendship problems, worries about the work or anything that is affecting your child emotionally.   Please speak to your class teacher if you think this may help your child.

Our ELSA TAs are Mrs. Bentley,  Mrs. Giddings and Miss Davis and they are based in the Rainbow Room.