Suicide Prevention and the National Curriculum

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for introducing the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee.

Most of all, I thank the 3 Dads Walking for everything they have done to raise awareness of suicide in young people. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mike, Andy and Tim. I am delighted that their petition has led to this debate being brought forward, with 160,000 signatures. That is truly amazing. There could not be a more fitting tribute to the lives of Beth, Sophie and Emily than the passion and dedication that their dads have shown. I also thank Papyrus for its support to the 3 Dads and for all its work to tackle young suicides.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention, it has been an honour to meet so many inspiring people who, having lost a loved one to suicide, have dedicated so much time and energy to ensuring that other families do not have to go through the same thing. The 3 Dads is the club that no one wants to join, as they say. However, many people who have found themselves in it have carried out brilliant work in the face of great adversity. The Government must do everything they can to match their efforts.

Unfortunately, the issue is touching more and more families. Suicide has recently become the biggest killer of young people under 25. It is estimated that in an average week, four schoolchildren will take their own lives. Although young men are three times more likely to take their own lives than their female peers, the suicide rate for young women is now at its highest on record. We are getting better at tackling the stigma and talking about mental health, but suicide and self-harm is still a taboo subject. As we have heard, people are worried that by talking about suicide, they may say the wrong thing—or worse, encourage it. That is a particular fear when talking to children and young people about suicide.

Sadly, this issue is already in the lives of so many young people, as demonstrated by work carried out on online harms. In a recent Samaritans study with over 5,000 participants, over three quarters of them said they first saw self-harm content online before the age of 14. Several studies have suggested an association between suicidal ideation and accessing relevant content online. Better online safeguards are a must, but we must also equip our young people with the skills and knowledge to deal with the unique pressures that they currently face.

It has been my pleasure to work with the local organisation If U Care Share, which has been delivering suicide prevention workshops to school pupils across the north-east for over 10 years. The charity was founded by the family of Daniel O’Hare, who was just 19 when he took his own life in 2005. Its dedicated team, which includes Daniel’s brother Matthew, is primarily made up of young people who have lost a loved one to suicide. The team speak to primary and secondary school children about their own stories, and how the children can be open about their emotions and mental health. Research carried out by the charity found that 19% of young people would go to a friend if they needed help, compared to just 6% who would approach someone at their school.

Suicide prevention training equips pupils with the skills and confidence to help each other as well as themselves. If U Care Share is one of many fantastic voluntary organisations that are working with young people to prevent suicide, but currently those organisations are picking up the pieces left over from the incapacity of statutory services. They often rely on short-term grants to carry out their vital work.

I am delighted to be able to say that If U Care Share has just been awarded funding from the National Lottery to support its suicide bereavement multiple death response programme over four years. Multiple deaths refers to a situation where more deaths occur by suicide than is normally expected at a certain time or place—or both. That can sometimes be as a result of contagion, whereby one person’s suicide influences another to engage in suicidal behaviour. Such suicide clusters are a rare event, but schools can be a setting in which they occur.

We must do more to ensure that suicide prevention work is placed on a stable footing. Currently, all funding supporting local areas’ core prevention plans is set to cease in 2023-24. We need continued ring-fenced funding across three years to support local areas to deliver targeted, non-clinical support services to prevent suicide. That would allow local authorities to commission long-term services from our best organisations, and empower them to support the most at-risk groups.

We must also do more to ensure that children are able to access help when they reach out for it. NHS figures show that children suffering mental health crises spent more than 900,000 hours in A&E last year. Between July 2021 and July 2022, referrals to child and adolescent mental health services increased by 24%. It is still important that we work to prevent suicidal ideation in young people, and promote mental wellbeing. It is also important that we ensure there are systems in place to support them in the most acute crises.

Making suicide prevention an essential part of the curriculum is another step towards ensuring that statutory, long-term support is in place for our young people whenever they may need it. But it must be backed up by the funding to ensure that all school pupils are able to access those life-saving workshops, such as those delivered by If U Care Share, and many other organisations. It must take the form of sensitive and thought-out content, delivered by people with the experience to make it count. Crucially, it must be built in as part of the curriculum, as the petitioners request, so that every student is supported.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for her excellent speech, and particularly for the work she is doing as part of the APPG. On the comment that this is a cross-party issue, it has been mentioned that suicide sadly affects many families across the UK. My family is one of those, following the tragic suicide of my brother. Recently, I launched a campaign to have 100 people on Anglesey trained in mental health first aid. Does the hon. Member agree with me that it is absolutely vital that we talk about mental health, particularly with our young people, so we can give them the tools to speak about it and signpost them to the many fantastic organisations and charities that are there to support?

[Liz Twist]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and I offer my condolences to her on the loss of her brother. I, too, have been affected by suicide, so have personal experience of that and know how important it is to share. I certainly agree that it is vital that people talk more about suicide, and about having difficult suicidal thoughts as well. We want to prevent suicide, rather than see it continue. I thank her for that.

To conclude, I want to share a message from Daniel’s family, who often say,

“We taught Daniel to tie his shoe laces, and how to cross the road safely—but we never spoke to him about how life can throw things at you that you need some help to deal with. It is not a sign of weakness to reach out for help.”

Just like Daniel’s family, our schools teach our young people all about road awareness, online safety and many other vital lessons necessary to keep them safe, but today one of the things that is most likely to take the lives of our young people is our young people themselves. By talking more openly about suicide, we can save more young lives and prevent families like Daniel’s, Beth’s, Sophie’s and Emily’s from going through unimaginable pain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Debates such as this are illuminating, and I am sure hearing such stories will help those carrying out the review of the RHSE curriculum.

Teaching about mental health is only part of the story. Schools can play a vital role by providing safe, calm and supportive environments that promote good mental wellbeing and help prevent the onset of mental illness. We should not, however, expect teachers to act as mental health experts, nor to make a mental health diagnosis. Education staff are well placed to observe children day to day, and many schools provide excellent targeted support for pupils with mental wellbeing issues.

To help education settings implement effective whole-school or college approaches to mental health, we are funding all schools and colleges in England to train a senior mental health lead. Over 11,000 schools and colleges have already taken up that offer, including more than six in 10 state-funded secondary schools in England, and we have invested a further £10 million this year to ensure that up to two thirds of state-funded schools and colleges can benefit by April this year.

That is in addition to record funding for children and young people’s mental health support through the NHS long-term plan, which commits to increasing investment in mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year, putting mental health on a par with physical health, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) has been campaigning for. That means an additional 345,000 children and young people will be able to access NHS-funded mental health support by 2023-24.

A number of hon. Members raised the issue of access to mental health services for young people. Despite significant extra funding, we know that too many young people must wait for too long before they are seen by a mental health professional. Last year, the NHS set out its plans to introduce new access and waiting time standards for mental health services. One of those standards is for children and young people to start to receive their care within four weeks of referral, but hopefully sooner than that.

As a result of the 2017 Green Paper “Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision”, which is a very significant piece of work, more than 2.4 million children and young people now have access in schools and colleges to a mental health support team, which delivers evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues; supports each school or college to introduce or develop its approach to promoting and supporting mental health; and advises and liaises with external specialist services to help children and young people to get the right support and stay in education.

[Liz Twist]

I am looking at the petition organised by 3 Dads Walking. The Minister has given us some very important information about mental health support in schools, but this is quite simple: it is about talking to young people about suicide prevention and knowing that it is okay for them to talk about their feelings. Will the Minister say how he will approach that specific point in the RSHE review?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member makes an important point. That is a matter for the review. It needs to be carried out with thoroughness and speed, but we also need to consult experts on the issue, as well as talking to families and young people who have important experiences to convey to the review. I would not want to pre-empt that review with my own opinions. We want to ensure that it is a properly carried-out review; we will then get the best possible outcome from it, not just in this area but across the whole of the RSHE curriculum.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is a great champion of those who have dyspraxia, and he has real in-depth knowledge of the sector, as was discussed yesterday in the statement on the schools White Paper. He is right to say that Ofsted will continue, and from early years, all children will be taught a broad ambitious knowledge-rich curriculum and also have access to high-quality extracurricular activities. A school cannot be outstanding unless it is outstanding in its SEND provision as well.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talked about the importance of early intervention, which many organisations that I work with, such as the Child Brain Injury Trust, are keen to ensure happens and that support is given. More generally, can he talk more about the local SEND partnerships and how parents can have a voice and a say in them?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. In that partnership, we are proposing to ensure that parents are an important part of the local SEND plan, as we have seen in the best co-created plans in those areas around the country that I mentioned earlier, such as North Tyneside and Manchester.

Covid-19: Education Settings

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of ensuring that we have the correct and best information to inform decisions on the vaccination of children. It is my hope that the JCVI report will be imminently forthcoming, and that will obviously inform the decisions that the Government make in the best interests of all our children.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

For many months now, school leaders have been spending a lot of their time on weekends making contacts when they are notified that someone has covid-19, so I am glad that some of that responsibility will be shifted to NHS Test and Trace, but will the Secretary of State clarify exactly what the relationship will be, given the references in the guidance to settings still having a role to play in that situation?

[Gavin Williamson]

Of course. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the amazing and important role that schools, headteachers and our whole education team have played in supporting the efforts on test and trace. We expect the contacting to shift from schools having to do it to Test and Trace doing it, but of course contact information will sometimes still be asked of schools. We see the current burden that schools face being scaled back considerably, very much to the benefit of headteachers and teachers.

Covid-19: Impact on Attendance in Education Settings

Liz Twist Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

There is nothing that I can really disagree with my hon. Friend about, so I had better just sit down, hadn’t I?

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Too many schoolchildren across my constituency of Blaydon have faced disadvantage from being out of school under the current arrangements. Will the Secretary of State be absolutely clear with school leaders well in advance of any new arrangements to be put in place? It is vital that they have that information. Will he also talk about the support that can be given to disabled children to ensure that they have the chance to catch up on the education opportunities that they have missed?

[Gavin Williamson]

I very much want to reassure the hon. Lady that we will give all schools good notice of any new arrangements. As I have committed to, we are aiming to issue guidance and advice to schools in conjunction with the details of step 4. On disabled children and children with special educational needs, we will continue to have a really strong emphasis in terms of how we support special schools or alternative provision. In particular, we will weight the level of support at a much higher level for those schools than we do for mainstream schools.

Education Recovery

Liz Twist Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank my hon. Friend for asking such a thoughtful question on an issue that affects constituents across the board. Speech therapy is important, and I know from having had the experience as a child of having to go through speech therapy—as has my daughter —how important those interventions are at a very early stage to help children. I am pleased to clarify that that support is accessible as a result of the recovery premium. If he would be happy to do so, I ask him to send details of the school through my private office, and we will be able to put that clarification in writing if it would help his school.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I start by thanking all the teachers and non-teaching staff—all the school staff—for the tremendous work they have done in supporting the children in my constituency of Blaydon to get on with learning. It has been a tremendous effort. The Secretary of State has come out with some fine words about the recovery plan, but what it amounts to is £50 per child, and that simply is not enough to make a real difference and produce the catch-up that the children of my constituency need. What will he be doing to persuade the Chancellor to come up with some more money for education?

[Gavin Williamson]

I feel as if I spend most of my ministerial career having the pleasure of asking Chancellors for more money. The right hon. Member for North East Durham had that experience many times when he was in government.

I would like to gently correct the hon. Lady. The figure that she mentions is not the correct figure, because we have actually made multiple commitments on catch-up funding over and above that. So far we have committed more than £3 billion. I would also like to join her in thanking all the teachers who have done such an amazing job all the way through this pandemic and have done so much work and put so much effort in. I have seen it with my own family members, who have been making their own contribution, whether as teaching assistants or as teachers themselves. We want to continue to build on the interventions that really work—interventions that I genuinely believe will deliver significant benefits for her constituents in Blaydon, because they are all aimed at delivering the best outcomes for children.

Skills for Jobs White Paper

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I know that my right hon. Friend has championed this not just in his maiden speech, but the whole time he has been in the House of Commons. He is absolutely right that it is not adequate to expect family members to be able to give young people the advice they need. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to Lord Baker of Dorking, who did so much in moving the amendment.

We need to toughen this up. I want to see parity of esteem—people looking at the choices they can take, and not just immediately moving to university. I would like UCAS to demonstrate that by having a list of college courses available to students, especially if we move to a system of post-qualification application. I think that colleges and what they can provide could be a much more powerful offer for so many young people.

I will happily take up my right hon. Friend’s thought about having a parallel system to UCAS. It may also be worth looking at the options for bringing it together and making sure that UCAS includes college courses so that students can make the very best decisions for their futures.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab) [V]]

Young people in my constituency of Blaydon need to know that they will have training opportunities for the jobs of the future, as well as the jobs we have now. How does this White Paper align with wider Government policy on the industrial strategy, and how do we plan the skills for future jobs?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, and that is why we set up the skills and productivity board to look at some of the challenges. For many businesses, one challenge is that they are not necessarily looking at taking people on through a graduate route, where someone has to learn skills over a three-year period; often, they are looking for much smaller, bite-sized training. That is why the boot camps that we are launching in areas such as digital training and advanced engineering are so incredibly important, to ensure that the sector has the responsiveness it needs to satisfy the skills needs that so many businesses in her constituency are crying out for.

Exams and Accountability 2021

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

This is what all the measures we are introducing are aimed at doing: making sure that children who have missed out on the opportunity to learn are able to focus their efforts, as they come to the crucial exam period, on the things that will matter most to them as they try to achieve the very best grade. This is on top of the action we have taken with the covid catch-up fund, which has already been initiated and is available to all students in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Last week, I met headteachers from across Gateshead who talked about this very issue of unfairness. Today’s statement covers the issue across the whole cohort, but, as many other colleagues have said, what measures will the Secretary of State take to ensure that those who have been through isolation—there are many of those in the north-east and in my constituency—and do not have access to technology are really able to make up that difference and are able to be tested fairly in that system?

[Gavin Williamson]

Again, not wishing to repeat myself, we recognise that there are children in that situation. That is why we think it is really important that teachers and pupils alike have a clear sense of where the testing will be applied so that, over the final months as they head to exams in summer 2021, they are able to focus that effort and those resources on ensuring that they cover all those key critical areas.

Free School Meals

Liz Twist Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

This is a hugely important debate for many families in my constituency and across the north-east and the country. I applaud Marcus Rashford for his hard work in raising this issue. Data from the North East Child Poverty Commission shows that almost 93,000 children and young people across the north-east were in receipt of free school meals in the last academic year, 2019-20. However, these figures do not take into account the full impact—indeed, hardly any of the impact—of covid-19 on family incomes and the number of families who have registered for such support in recent weeks.

In fact, the Food Foundation recently published an estimate that more than 900,000 children have signed up for free school meals for the first time this year. Over 50% of those using Trussell Trust food banks at the start of the pandemic had never needed help from a food bank before, and families with children were the hardest hit, accounting for nearly two in five of the households needing to use a food bank. These are staggering numbers. We talked earlier about universal credit being a help, but so many people are finding for the first time that universal credit is really poor and does not help those most in need, especially those applying for the first time, who might have expected help.

We know from the North East Child Poverty Commission’s figures that more than one in three children and young people grow up in poverty in the north-east and that the north-east has the highest proportion of children in receipt of free school meals. In Gateshead, there were 6,135 students in receipt of free school meals before the covid-19 pandemic. That is 20% of pupils, and that number cannot help but go up in the coming months, as we see the impact of job losses, short-time working and so forth. We know that the covid-19 pandemic will have a huge impact.

During the summer, I had the privilege of visiting some of the holiday hunger schemes and activities in my constituency. I saw at first hand how well appreciated the free lunches and free school meals were in those activities, so I know the difference that they can make. Of course the Government must continue to fund free school meal provision in every school holiday between October half-term and Easter 2021 and extend the offer of free school meals to all families receiving universal credit and those with no recourse to public funds. However, we have to do more than that in the face of this crisis, with rising costs and unemployment, and millions of families falling into poverty.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to pay tribute to the teachers and all the staff in schools, nurseries and colleges in Warrington South. They have been doing a fantastic job. The approach that we are taking is very much in line with that of other nations. We all understand that, within education settings, there are constraints and restrictions under which teachers and headteachers have to operate, and we have to find practical solutions for that. That is why we have taken a lot of time to look at how this is being done in other countries and copy the very best practice as a result.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Primary headteachers in my constituency tell me that there are pinch points at the start and end of each school day as children and parents come together. Our school leaders are planning how to mitigate this problem, but it may require adaptation, so they are asking: will the Secretary of State set aside funding to ensure that schools can access money to avoid the problem of people coming together?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about reducing the chances of people meeting and increasing the likelihood of transmission. That is why we have asked schools to look at the option of staggered starts for year groups to mitigate those chances.

Educational Settings

Liz Twist Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We already have an edtech strategy for promoting this, but we will see a much more rapid and speedy evolution of some of these learning aids and resources, and we must look at how best we can harness new technology to ensure that all children are in a position to be able to get the very best out of education, even in the coming weeks.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State say more about special schools like Gibside in my constituency that have children with very special needs? Is he saying that schools like Gibside will remain open? If so, what support can be given to the staff?

[Gavin Williamson]

We have to recognise that schools such as Gibside will be facing considerable pressures in terms of staffing and the spread of the virus, but also in terms of pupils who may be unwell. Many children who attend special schools such as Gibside will be on an EHCP, which obviously puts them in the category of vulnerable children for whom we are looking to make sure there is continued provision.