Our Relational Approach

At The Wensum Trust, we take a different approach to education, aimed at supporting children, their families, our staff and our wider communities. We aim to work together to understand and respond to individual circumstances, regardless of background or early life adversities, in order to help every child to develop into high achieving, confident, healthy, caring and resilient members of their family and community.

We want our schools to be healthy, happy environments in which both children and staff can develop. We want children to develop academically, whilst also learning how to relate to others — to be good friends; to become good employees, good parents and good citizens. 

In order to achieve this, we understand that developing strong, positive relationships through a relational approach is key.

"Being mindful of our relationship with all children and adults, and using opportunities to support them by forming and sustaining quality relationships"

- Wensum Trust Definition of 'relational approach'

Understanding that everyone responds to emotions and manages them in different ways is central to forming and sustaining quality relationships. The Wensum Trust are dedicated to helping children understand and effectively manage the emotions they feel. For this reason, we ensure that all our staff are trained in Emotion Coaching.

Emotion Coaching helps us to guide children to calmly use more effective responses. It enables us to proactively support children to meet expectations, whilst supporting emotional literacy, relationship skills and long-term emotional wellbeing.