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Thriving Me
A six-session emotional wellbeing programme for Year 6 pupils, grounded in Public Health Wales evidence.
Sessions build emotional literacy, resilience and self-compassion — helping children manage stress, understand anxiety, and navigate pressures like social media — giving children practical tools to understand and manage what's happening inside them, not just who to turn to when something's wrong.
Why Year 6
Year 6 sits at a critical point. It's the last year of primary school, the final year before the jump to secondary — and evidence shows this is exactly when pressure starts to build: schoolwork expectations rise, friendships shift, self-worth and body image start to take shape, and anxiety about the unknown creeps in. It's also the last point where every child in a school can be reached together, before they scatter across different secondary schools and support becomes harder to deliver.
We believe this is a window worth protecting — a chance to give children the internal tools to carry with them, before the pressures of secondary school arrive.
What the Programme Covers
Stress and Pressure
understanding what's happening around them, and why it feels the way it does.
The Brain, Body & Anxiety
Making sense of physical and emotional responses to worry.
Resilience
Building the capacity to cope with setbacks and challenges.
Self Worth & Self Compassion
Understanding their own value, separate from achievement or comparison and learning to be kind to themselves, especially when things are hard.
A golden thread of self-talk and self-compassion runs through every session, and social media and digital pressures are woven throughout rather than treated as a single topic — reflecting how present they actually are in children's daily lives.
How it is Delivered
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Structure
Thriving Me is delivered by a trained facilitator working alongside a member of school staff, in paired and small-group activities designed to feel safe and personal rather than like a lesson. Each session runs 50–60 minutes.
Every child keeps their own personal workbook — a private, journal-style space that belongs entirely to them.
It isn't reviewed or marked by staff. It's theirs to write in, reflect in, and keep, both during the programme and afterwards.
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Integration
Thriving Me is designed to complement — not duplicate — other wellbeing provision in Welsh schools, including national safety and signposting programmes.
Where those programmes focus on helping children recognise when something is wrong and who to tell, Thriving Me goes further: building the emotional skills and resilience children draw on before they ever reach that point, and helping them make sense of what they're feeling day to day.
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Evidence
Thriving Me has been developed in direct response to Public Health Wales's Health Needs Assessment on children and young people's mental health, and is aligned with the Welsh Government's Whole School Approach to Emotional and Mental Wellbeing.