Charlton School

22^nd January 2021

Dear Parents / Carers,

I hope that you are all staying safe and well? As we come to the end of the third week of lockdown, I wanted to send out another Emotional Health and Wellbeing update, as next week is our Wellbeing week.

Our students are doing incredibly well to access online learning, as well as home life and the continued uncertainty over how long this lockdown will last. It has been a massive learning curve for everyone in terms of technology and navigating Teams lessons, more so now than in the previous lockdown. Most students are handling this with amazing resilience, supported by help from home, but some students may be beginning to struggle with a few things, and it is important for everyone to realise that it is ok to not be ok. There are going to be times when your son/daughter may be finding things difficult, and it is important that they know where to access support from.

We introduced Tootoot a few months ago, and I would like to remind everyone of how to access this, to ensure that, even during periods of self-isolation, our students are able to seek support from our dedicated pastoral and wellbeing team.

Tootoot is a safe, secure, and diverse web-based safeguarding tool, which allows students to report wellbeing concerns as well as any bullying issues they may be facing, in an anonymous, confidential and discreet manner. These individual cases are monitored, managed, and resolved by staff within the school. Tootoot reduces the friction and stigma attached to the reporting of such incidents, and ultimately provides us with the tools required to track, monitor, and resolve cases efficiently, support wellbeing and reduce instances of bullying.

Tootoot not only encourages students to report their concerns, it also encourages them to work together and strengthen communication links between them and their teachers by removing barriers.

Each student has already received an email with a link to set up a secure password, but these are going to be re-sent again to students who haven’t activated their accounts yet – this will come to your son’s/daughter’s school email account, but may end up in the spam / junk folder. Once set up, they can quickly report incidents and concerns directly to school. Each school has their own sub-domain, therefore only teachers and students from our school will be able to communicate with one another. All students are anonymous at the point of reporting, but identities can be uncovered by the school’s designated Tootoot administrator only if it appears the student’s emotional or physical well-being is at serious risk. Once their account is set up students can access Tootoot on any web-enable device (computers; laptops; tablets or mobiles) by following these 4 simple steps:

Step 1: Type www.tootoot.co.uk into their web browser.

Step 2: Click ‘Login to tootoot’

Step 3: Start typing the school name and select it from the box

Step 4: Enter their username and password, and log their concern with the school

Students have watched an introduction to Tootoot in their virtual year group assembly, which was either delivered in form time or uploaded to the Doddle platform for those learning at home.

In addition to Tootoot we have many resources, information and links on the school website http://www.charlton.uk.com/parent-student-information/wellbeing-ehwb as well as ways to contact members of staff for support.

If you need any further details, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards

Miss A Wills