Farlington School Wellbeing Centre
Farlington School is an independent day and boarding school for pupils aged 4-18 in Horsham, West Sussex. In response to their student council discussions about wellbeing, they wanted to create a designated space for delivering wellbeing support for both the students and staff in order to develop their support provisions further.
Farlington School chose Cabins for Schools to design and install their new Wellbeing Centre right at the heart of nature within their beautiful green school grounds. The Wellbeing Centre building is comprised of two 17m² cabins joined together, including a single and double side room and a 1.5m Porch.
The school uses the wellbeing centre for a variety of support sessions and activities, such as for their life skills program, morning mindfulness, seasonal mindfulness, lunchtime doodle club, woodland wellbeing and thinking allowed sessions. It's also used as a designated safe space for counselling drop-in sessions and guided meditation. The school even offers wellbeing support for their staff, such as relaxing sound bath sessions!
Click here to watch our fantastic case study with the staff and students at Farlington School
Read what the staff at Farlington School have had to say about their cabin and the impact it has had...
'Our Wellbeing Centre provides a sanctuary away from the hustle and bustle of school life, giving students from the Lower School to the Sixth Form a safe space, which promotes a sense of calm and reflection. To see our students now beginning to make use of the space as an oasis of calm in our thriving community is precisely the vision we had when the idea was conceived. We see our Wellbeing Centre as a true community space situated in the heart of our school campus and supporting the needs of our whole community: pupils, staff and parents.'
'At Farlington, we always talk about the importance of our pastoral care and it being a mesh. It’s there to catch students and support them. I think the wellbeing centre has provided a really tangible sense to what that means at this school.' - Mr James Passam, Headmaster
‘We use the cabin a lot for life skills as part of our life skills programme and we have our thinking allowed club. The students can have some breath work and some meditation and then once they’re in that zone and have totally decompressed, we can have some really philosophical discussions and that leads to all kinds of conversations which can be really powerful. As well as providing wellbeing support to out students, we also offer it to the staff. On Tuesday evenings, the staff are invited to come to the wellbeing centre where we do some breath work and body scans and it’s just that time where they are a world away from everything that’s going on. Life stops for that hour. So I think that’s been really useful.' - Mrs Tamara Pearson, Assistant head of lower school & year 5 teacher
'This space is perfect for what we do. It’s brilliant having the two rooms because I can set up an activity in one room and it’s the children’s choice if they want to join in with it or not. Having the other room mean that I can put art materials and journals in there and a basket of books so the children can do as they please in there.' - Mrs Kirsty Thirwall, Mindfulness instructor
‘It’s a really lovely environment. The kids come in, we take our shoes off and sit on sofas and it feels like we’re a little bit separate from the school environment which I think is really helpful.’ - Mrs Katie Worrallo, School counsellor
Want to find out even more? Watch our interview with co-chair of Farlington's PTA and their Designated Safeguarding Lead. See how the wellbeing centre project emerged...
