Alison Waterhouse is the founder of Circles for Learning. Alison has had an exciting and varied career in Education over the past 30 years. She was the founding Head of a therapeutic special school in Kent which gained an excellent reputation for managing both the academic and social and emotional needs of the children it supported. During her time as head, Alison trained at the Tavistock and Portman Clinic in London and then The Caspari Foundation as an educational psychotherapist.
Alison decided to return to mainstream school in 2006 before deciding to become an independent consultant for SEN and wellbeing. Alison has also worked as a consultant for Young Minds, The Anna Freud Foundation and is an advisor for Optimus Education, advising schools on how to achieve their Wellbeing Award.
Alison has been developing Circles for Learning over the past nine years and has books published by Routledge, five of which are the Mental Health & Wellbeing Toolkit. The toolkit contains exciting lesson plans and resources to support the Circles for Learning project.
Alison is passionate about supporting teachers to develop the skills to create a classroom culture that creates strong foundations for mental health and wellbeing as well as learning.
The Circles for learning project is deeply embedded in research conducted during Alison's career, growing out of Alison’s experience and training around the effective lifelong learning inventory described by Guy Claxton, Ruth Deakin Crick and Professor Patricia Broadfoot.
Alison was aware that staff needed help and support in developing knowledge and understanding in these areas and that children needed to develop skills to support their development. Over the next year she ran a project in her school, exploring how children responded to a visitor parent and young child. She followed the observation sessions with lessons teaching emotion literacy, social skills, and brain development. Alongside this work, Alison began to research the areas that made a difference to mental health and wellbeing.
Identifying five key areas that impact on children's ability to build positive mental health and wellbeing, the Circles for Learning project evolved and grew. With the help of six amazing teachers, Alison then ran the project across schools based in East Sussex, training the staff, coaching the work and providing some of the lessons.
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