Universal Wellbeing Practices in Schools: Framing Evidence-Informed Practice Within the Five Ways to Wellbeing

In 2017, the UK Government published Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision: A Green Paper (Department for Education & Department of Health, 2017), making clear that their intention is to place schools at the forefront of a national strategy to improve the mental wellbeing of children. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice (SEND CoP; Department for Education & Department of Health, 2015) includes Social, Emotional and Mental Health as one primary area of SEND, emphasising a graduated approach to intervention, beginning with high-quality teaching. Taken together, the clear implication is that schools should arrange provision to promote children’s wellbeing at the universal level, not just at the targeted and specialist levels. With its emphasis upon evidence-based actions, the New Economics Foundation’s (NEF’s) Five Ways to Wellbeing (Aked et al., 2008) is proposed here as a framework for organising provisions. Relevant evidence-based programs, as well as strategies and procedures, are presented, each of which is universally applicable, relevant across primary and secondary phases, and linked to the NEF’s Five Ways.