Abstract
In 2021, the Welsh Government introduced new statutory guidance for schools titled ‘Framework Guidance on Embedding a Whole School Approach to Emotional and Mental Wellbeing’. This document outlined new responsibilities for educational settings to work towards incorporating a whole school approach, with regard to the Framework in action planning, service delivery and policy in relation to the mental and emotional wellbeing of learners and staff. While there is growing evidence to suggest that whole school approaches can be beneficial to social and emotional wellbeing for pupils, evidence on effective implementation is limited. This paper reports on findings from qualitative group interviews with staff in schools in Wales, conducted as part of a wider, mixed-methods evaluation of the Framework. It focuses on factors in the school context which impacted initial implementation. A number of school level factors were identified as barriers to implementation and staff engagement with the Framework. School staff reported higher levels of pupil mental health challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and an absence of capacity in in-house and external support services to address this. Poor staff wellbeing and significant workload pressures were also reported, driven in part by concurrent implementation of the new Curriculum For Wales. This led staff to feel ill-prepared for the more complex issues being faced, exacerbated by a lack of access to relevant training to be able to support pupil and colleague mental health. This paper concludes with recommendations for policy-makers to support Framework implementation.