What is Health Coaching?
Health Coaching offers a supportive, personalised approach to improve someone’s health and well-being. Health Coaching is about being your own advocate and making informed choices with a trusted guide by your side, your Health Coach, helping you identify where you are, where you want to be and the small, manageable steps that you will take to get there. It is a relationship built on encouragement, accountability and trust that can make all the difference when you’re trying to create new habits. Health Coaching guides people to feel empowered to take small steps towards a healthier life. It enables people to unlock their potential and thrive both personally and professionally.
Why is Health Coaching needed in Schools?
A school community is made up of many employees who all have an integral role in educating and caring for our future generations. Councils and schools have a huge role to play in supporting the health of their workforce and a Health Coach can be a powerful conduit for improving people’s health and well-being within employment situations and communities. With our Public Health Services in crisis and many school staff, pupils and families struggling with health issues, there has NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO EMPLOY A HEALTH COACH to benefit the whole school community.
Benefits for School Leadership:
- Reduction in the number of hours lost due to staff sickness absence.
- Reduction in costs for covering absentees with supply cover and agency staff meaning less demand on the budget.
- Staff with increased energy levels who are more productive, creative and enthusiastic in their work.
- Improved school attendance rates by getting persistently absent pupils back in the classroom.
- An effective and sensitive strategy in place to manage staff health issues and the health needs of individuals.
- Provision for the support of staff and pupils whose health and well-being are affected by stress.
- Preventative measures in place to raise awareness of how to improve, maintain and promote better physical and mental health across the school community.
- A thriving school community with ongoing access to opportunities that encourage a healthy lifestyle.
Benefits for School Staff:
- Improved knowledge and understanding of complex health information.
- Increased awareness and desire to take responsibility for improving their own health and well-being in sustainable ways including nutrition and lifestyle factors.
- Help to navigate the challenges of behaviour change to make new healthier habits stick.
- Reignited passion and renewed vitality in their work.
- Happier home lives with a better work/life balance.
- Improved relationships with colleagues, allowing for effective teamwork.
- The crucial understanding that caring for themselves better will, in turn, positively impact the children in their care.
- Less likely to be absent from school due to sickness and poor health.
- Feeling valued and fully supported by leadership to successfully return to work after a period of sick leave, with measures in place to help them stay in work.
- Increased ability and a toolbox of useful strategies to cope well with the demands and pressures of working in a school environment.
Benefits for School Pupils and their Families:
- Improved Health Literacy.
- Essential knowledge of how the clever human body functions and how key pillars of lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, stress, physical movement, relationships and risky substances) impact their health and how they can make better choices.
- Improved sleep and food choices leading to better mood, energy, concentration and focus throughout the school day.
- Fewer behavioural issues impacting their school work, the work of their peers and family life at home.
- Increased attendance rates with reduced anxiety around coming to school.
- Ability to engage in meaningful interactions and to establish better relationships with their peers and communication among families.
- Less experience of depressive episodes, loneliness and low self esteem.
- More confidence and effective strategies to cope with challenging health conditions they may live with such as Diabetes, Asthma/Allergies.
- Happier and healthier children in school who feel so much better physically and mentally making them more able to achieve their potential academically.
I am a qualified Health Coach having graduated from The College of Naturopathic Medicine (CNM) with a Diploma in Health Coaching. I am a Registered Health Coach with The UK and International Health Coaching Association (UKIHCA.)
As a UKIHCA-Approved Health Coach, I am a credentialled professional who upholds the highest of Professional Standards in Health Coaching and adheres to a UKIHCA Scope of Practice and professional Code of Conduct. Continual Professional Development requirements are met annually. I hold a current DBS to work in schools and with children, plus a relevant insurance policy to practice as a Health Coach.