B&Q Washington

We are a community primary school based in Birtley, Gateshead. We are a school who has a higher than average number of pupils who are subject to pupil premium and free school meals. We pride ourselves in knowing our families, and serving the school community to address the social needs of our families as well as the education provision for the children. We provide a free breakfast club so that our children can come to school without the stigma of skipping breakfast, and feeling ready to learn and engage with their peers.

Breakfast Club at Academy 360 welcomes students at 8am with several choices of hot and cold breakfast which include items such as toast, porridge, bagels, cereal, overnight oats, fresh fruit and yogurts. At Academy 360 we understand the importance of healthy breakfast to start a students day. The students are able to sit with their friends or family, maybe catch up on homework or simply chat to staff before the start of their day. At Academy 360 our service is free so we welcome help and support with breakfast items from food, crockery, cutlery and electrical items such as toasters and microwaves.

We deliver our mental health services in a ‘safe space’, where people feel accepted, comfortable and are able to access the support they need. We moved to our current premises The Life House in June 2013, providing a much needed wellbeing resource centre for the community. The bigger premises enabled the organisation along with key partners to deliver a wider range of wellbeing services, develop new partnerships and provide a healthy environment for service users and our staff and volunteers to work in. We offer an open referral system so that anyone can refer to make our support as accessible as possible, a telephone call or popping into the Life House is all that is needed to start the process. Our support is built around choice and current activities include: information resources (including websites and digital resources), counselling, alternative therapies, telephone support, therapeutic group work, psycho-educational sessions, wellbeing activities, training and volunteering opportunities. Genuine service involvement is at the heart of all that we do and we endeavour to challenge and reduce stigma and discrimination.