School-based Counselling Services

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I have a relatively open mind on the particular route that should be taken to meet these issues head-on, and I have no ideological objection to a role for the voluntary sector or for those who want to contribute, but—at least in England—the state must take a lead. Things cannot be left as they are. I believe that school-based counselling, regardless of which organisation provides it, could fill the gap between those mental health support teams in schools and the national health service’s child and adolescent mental health services. There are limits to voluntarism, of course, and we would need the people delivering the service in the schools to have some form of qualification and understanding of what they are doing.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy makes that point and is campaigning on these issues. Schools-based counselling is a proven intervention for children and young people experiencing psychological distress. Some 50% of mental health disorders are present by the age of 14, increasing to 75% by the age of 18, so early intervention is key, as it is with many of these issues.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has just mentioned the statistics about early intervention. In the previous debate we were talking about investment in children at a young age. Does he agree that targeted investment in these young people is not just good for those individuals but makes economic common sense, in that the payback will be that we have productive and stable members of society?

[Mr Brown]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It also relieves pressure on the national health service in the longer term, because the NHS tends to end up as the service of last resort—a role it shares with the police, equally unfairly in my view.

I commend the efforts of the Tyne & Wear Citizens group, which has been working to raise the profile of schools-based counselling and with which I have had regular meetings. The group has set out three core principles that a successful schools-based counselling programme ought to follow: first, that services should be co-operative and inclusive, including the use of digital wellbeing tools, telephone counselling and face-to-face sessions at school or external venues; secondly, that services should be collaborative and liaise with external agencies such as social services and the police where it is appropriate to do so and, thirdly, that services should be consistent, provided by those trained on a nationally recognised course, registered with a professional body and experienced in working with school-age children.

In concluding my contribution to this debate, I want to say something about the schools-based counselling programme in place in the Newcastle East NEAT Academy Trust in my constituency. I have nothing but praise for the project itself and the enthusiastic support that it is receiving from the broader schools community; my right hon. Friend will remember it well, because he used to be a councillor for the local government ward that it serves.

The project has found clear signs of improvement in educational attainment for around one in three of the pupils who received counselling. There was a significant improvement in pupils’ achieving their personal goals, with an 85% improvement in reported progress towards achieving these goals. No child reported a sharp deterioration in progress.

The counsellor—not a local government-type councillor but a schools-based counsellor—in the trial that is taking place has told me that embedding the counselling service as part of the whole-school approach is vital to removing the stigma around mental health and promoting a culture shift in the community. She has reported high levels of engagement in the programme and has stressed that demand is increasing. In order to reach more children and young people in crisis and to prevent future mental health issues from developing, I am convinced that the project has made a strong case for more school-based counsellors delivering interventions.

Were the Government to continue to take an interest in this way, it should be possible to achieve something more. I give them credit for tentatively seeing the need to intervene in this area and I hope that today’s debate, across the Floor of the House, reinforces their appetite for further action.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee. Talking about mental health is something that we are doing more of in this place, and that is good.

In August 2019, the Children’s Society produced “The Good Childhood Report”, which found that an increasing number of young people—around a quarter of a million—are now feeling low and unhappy about their lives. The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has just mentioned the pandemic. I recommend that people read the recent report by King’s College London and Oxford University on the pandemic and young people’s mental health, because we have not yet seen the long-term effects.

In opening, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East mentioned the statistic that 50% of mental health problems develop before the age of 14, and 75% before the age of 24. We have to change attitudes in this country. Is mental health a health issue? I have to say that for me, it is not; it is an economic issue as well. If we are not going to invest money in early interventions in schools, we will frankly not get the economic rewards. Those interventions would not only improve individuals’ lives, but save us money later on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) mentioned CAMHS. I pay tribute to all who work in CAMHS, but it will never work as it is set up at the moment. We can pour as much money as we like into it, but it will just not work. We have to try to stop the pipeline of young people going into CAMHS, because some people will need assessment by CAMHS but a lot of people do not. It is totally demoralising for young people and their families to be stuck on waiting lists, so we need processes to ensure that they can get early intervention.

I fully support school-based counselling as a way forward, but this is a broader issue. It is not just about schools; it is about the entire way we set up mental health services in this country. We need an open access policy, where people can access mental health services in the community and young people can access them in schools. If we do not do that, we will always have this system where we pour so much money into the medical side of it without addressing the real problem: dealing with those who are in crisis and need support earlier. Early intervention can prevent people from calling on services in later life, and save money. It is not just about saving money, though; it is about ensuring that those people have fulfilling lives.

Are schools islands? No, they are not. They are part of local communities, and it is vitally important that whatever we put into schools—I would certainly make it mandatory for schools to have school-based counselling —has to have links into local communities. I consider myself very fortunate in County Durham. We have a fantastic network of community-based, open-access, voluntary sector organisations that get on and deal with helping people in the community. If U Care Share is a suicide prevention charity that goes into schools and works in the community around young people and mental health. We have just had the new, fantastic Think Positive PACT House project open in Stanley in my constituency. It is a completely open-access hub. People can just walk into it and get the support they need. The people there not only give people support but, if they need to, refer them to more intensive services. We have a fantastic organisation called Rollercoaster based at the Riverside in Chester-le-Street, which supports parents of young people suffering with mental illness. We should not forget that it is not just the young person who is affected; the issue often affects an entire family. Rollercoaster is a fantastic organisation working on that.

In the system I would like to see, it is very important that we have school-based counselling, but we have to have that network of community open-access facilities that allow people, if they want to, to access mental health services. That is not just about people who are in crisis; it could just be people who want some advice. We should do that. People say, “If you give it to the voluntary sector, that is saving money”—no, it is not. Money properly invested in the voluntary sector at the local level pays dividends. It will not only lead to better outcomes, but be better value for money.

I will finish on stigma, which I have done a lot of work on with many Members of the House. We are making progress, but we have to change people’s attitudes. It is that simple thing that if someone had a broken leg or a physical disability, they would go to a doctor or ask for help, but the problem is that many people do not do that when they have a mental health condition. We have to get the system to the point where people can just walk in, ask for help and get it. I have great respect for GPs, and make no criticism of the work they do, but they should not be the only way of accessing those services. If we had that open-access policy, community-based services and schools working with their local communities, we would not only have better outcomes for individuals, but save money. A lot of the cash that goes into mental health services should be redirected into community services and schools where people are accessing it.

To finish, the more we talk about this subject, the more normalised we make it. If I may, I give one message to young people today if they are suffering—we accept the huge pressures on them today. It is not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It is there, please ask for it.