We would love to welcome a wellbeing dog into our Firth Park Family, to support our students with their mental health and happiness, so they can all be remarkably happy and successful at school.

It’s a well-known fact wellbeing dogs can help reduce a student’s stress, anxiety and improve school attendance. At the University of Buckingham’s Ultimate Wellbeing in Education Conference recently Sir Anthony Seldon said, “The quickest and biggest hit that we can make to improve mental health in our schools and to make them feel safe for children, is to have at least one dog in every single school in the country.”

As a school we are really keen to home one and we have a volunteer teacher, who is willing to home the dog and bring them into school each day. The next task is to raise the estimated £3,000 to make this dream a reality. We have done our research and we are looking for a Cockapoo, as they are a medium size dog with excellent temperaments and are hypoallergenic.

Trained to be extremely patient, disciplined, and good-natured. Wellbeing dogs provide great companionship to students who are suffering from anxiety or struggling with other issues such as bereavement. Medical science has shown that a wellbeing dog can reduce blood pressure, promote physical healing, reduce anxiety, fatigue and depression, as well as provide emotional support.

Our wellbeing dog will spend most of its time in our Alternative Provision areas supporting students with social and emotional needs. However, so that all students can enjoy seeing our newest family member there will be drop-in sessions and reward opportunities for the students to see the dog and take it on walks around the school.

We are appealing for help to create our own little slice of paw heaven here at school and urge you to share our campaign far and wide amongst your animal loving friends, family and associates by using the share buttons above.

So why crowdfunding? Crowdfunding is a great way to hit a fundraising target through a group of people all coming together to put funds into the same pot and encouraging others to do the same.

The larger the group or ‘crowd’ formed, the more money we raise so the key to any crowdfunding appeal is getting the message out there via all of our networks.

Please help us to make this possible by donating as much as you can and please pass on the appeal details on your own social media network to family, friends and your other contacts to help spread our message. Every single donation helps.

We will be running a competition that the highest fundraisers will get to nominate a name for the whole school to then vote on …….. So if you would like a chance to name the pup and bring a wonderful wellbeing dog to Firth Park Academy, please donate NOW!