Suporting your menopause action plan
The following sessions are designed to help you create and realise your Menopause Action Plan. They are also useful for smaller schools for whom a Menopause Action Plan is not mandatory.
Menopause Training for Heads and SLT £350
90 minutes to 2 hours, online or face to face
Need to do some proper thinking together and work out how your school is going to tackle menopause, talk about menopause, create a menopause friendly culture and translate that into real and useful action?
This is delivered bespoke and would usually be prepared for with a 30 minute conversation with a representative of the team, and a survey. If necessary it can be cut down to 60 minutes by arranging material for the team to read in preparation.
It would usually cover issues such as:
- Contributing to an open culture around menopause, women’s health and mental health.
- How a whole school conversation about menopause might look.
- Menopause inequality.
- How to keep your menopause policy alive
- How you might organise peer support.
- What adjustments might be considered reasonable.
- How do you manage conversations around menopause and adjustments.
- Discussions of real life examples of menopause challenges and conversations in school.
Menopause Training for School Leaders and Team Managers £200
60-90 minutes, online or face to face
This is delivered bespoke to fulfill the needs of the school. It is likely to cover topics such as:
- How can we support our colleagues in perimenopause and menopause?
- How do we handle conversations that might be sensitive or embarrassing?
- Checklist for a positive menopause conversation
- Contributing to an open culture around menopause, women’s health and mental health.
- How might gender, race, culture, disability and other factors affect the experience of menopause?
- What changes can be made on a whole school level?
- What accommodations do school staff in menopause often ask for? What can your school offer
- Discussions of real-life problems and requests.
Workshop: Individual Risk Assessments and Reasonable Adjustments £200
Are your staff worried about being asked to provide reasonable adjustments. Is there doubt over what reasonable is? How should they go ahead?
This workshop focusses on one of the key sources of anxiety around supporting school staff in perimenopause and menopause.
We look at:
What does reasonable adjustment mean?
How do you negotiate something that supports the member of staff but doesn’t impact on learning or the running of the department or school?
How can you get in a position where you are working with the member of staff to solve problems together rather than being in conflict.
What should this conversation include?
How do you assess risk in this situation?
How can you get the information you need without being intrusive?
A pro-forma for a relaxed risk-assessment conversation leading to reasonable adjustments is included as part of this session.
SETTING up a support group £200
Peer support is one of the most effective ways of helping staff deal with perimenopause and menopause. This workshop helps the school set up a group that works and keeps on working without exhausting anyone.
A core group comes together in a facilitated discussion to work out what is needed and how it can be provided in a way that’s helpful, inclusive, sustainable and sensible. We make key decision about how the support group will be run and what different roles will be.
As part of this the group will be left with The Menopause Support Group in a Box Cards, a resource that not only reiterates the key questions around set up but includes, activities, sources of information and questions to ask when things get sticky.
Workshop: Individual Risk Assessments and Reasonable Adjustments £200
Let’s find out how perimenopause and menopause are specifically affecting your staff. What are the risks to their health and safety and how do we mitigate them?
Are there specific features of your school life which create – or mitigate – problems?
Do your buildings or organisation of the school day add to the challenges?
Are all staff, including managers, aware of menopause and comfortable with the kinds of conversations they might need to have. What adjustments are, or may need to be, provided?
Are the various policies – menopause, wellbeing, sickness and absence, health and safety and equality – providing the support and information that your staff in perimenopause and menopause need?
Is there a culture in the school that’s compassionate about menopause and respectful to those who might be struggling with menopause or do staff experience shaming, stigma or even bullying?
How are other sensitive topics dealt with in school when they impact on staff as well as pupils?
Through a series of surveys, one-to-one and group discussions and an invitation for individuals to contact me directly via email, information will be amassed to build a picture of the experience of menopause staff. This is used to create a generalised risk assessment on which you can base policies and strategies.
This process draws from the recently released BSI standard - BS 30416 Menstrual and Menopausal Health in the Workplace and from the government's Menopause Action Plan advice.
Menopause in Schools – Menopause Policy Drafting £800
12 hours group menopause mentoring for 4-12 women
This usually follows the Generalised Risk Assessment but can be done as a stand alone element if you already have the key background information.
There will be a series of recommendations based on the risk assessment (above) which will be discussed with the school leadership. We will talk about what are ‘reasonable adjustments’ in your school and what you feel you are able and not able to offer. I will also ask you to share your ambitions for your menopause policy and the values you wish to be embodied in it.
The menopause policy will also be checked against other policies which might have a bearing on the experience and treatment of those going through perimenopause and menopause while in school. This would include the absence, health and safety, equality, disability and wellbeing policies and any others you would like to include.
The policy will also incorporate information about menopause symptoms and sources of support and information as well as a form to use for an individualised risk assessment.
This process draws from the recently released BSI standard - BS 30416 Menstrual and Menopausal Health in the Workplace and from the governments Menopause Action Plan advice.
Menopause Policy Mentoring £300
One hour session plus email follow up
Have a member of staff who is really struggling with perimenopause or menopause and needs help to get on the right path?
A one hour one to one session for a nominated member of staff or group of staff to work through options, priorities and practicalities to enable you to create your own policy from a template, to update the policy you already have or to check through related policies. There will be support by email and text as you write your policy and a further session to evaluate the policy you've written and to think about how to share it and make it work within your school.