Children and Young People: Mental Illness

(asked on 19th February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that mental health issues in children and young people are being (a) identified and (b) addressed where appropriate by schools and colleges before crisis intervention is required.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 25th February 2021

We remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, including introducing new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges, providing training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support.

To expand access to mental health support for children and young people with emerging mental health issues, we have committed to establishing new Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) in 20% to 25% of the country by 2023, as part of the additional support for children and young people’s mental health in the NHS Long Term Plan. MHSTs are intended to provide early intervention on mild to moderate issues, as well as helping staff within a school or college setting to provide a ‘whole-school approach’ to mental health and wellbeing. Where already established, MHSTs are adapting their services to continue supporting children and young people remotely during the COVID-19 outbreak. The first 25 trailblazer sites, delivering 59 MHSTs (covering approximately 4% of the country) were announced in December 2018. A further 57 sites were confirmed in July 2019 and started developing 123 MHSTs during 2020. More teams have been commissioned to begin training in the academic year 2020/21. These teams will become operational once the training of new Education Mental Health Practitioners completes. Training will be completed as soon as circumstances allow, in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The department is also committed to provide training for senior mental health leads in all state-funded schools and colleges in England. The training will equip senior mental health leads with the knowledge to introduce or develop their whole school/college approach to positive mental health are identified and implement effective processes for ensuring that they receive appropriate support, both to treat specific issues and appropriate pastoral support to keep them engaged in education where they are receiving or have had specialist treatment. MHSTs will be able to support leads with whole school approaches.

The COVID-19 outbreak has delayed the delivery of specific training for senior leads, as we decided to prioritise providing bespoke training and support to meet the immediate challenges that all schools and colleges will face in supporting the wellbeing of children and young people during the COVID-19 outbreak. We are reviewing how to provide training for senior leads, building on the wider recovery offer. In the interim, we know that mental health leads will want to consider their whole school/college approach to supporting students as they return to settings. The Wellbeing for Education Return training, which has been available during the COVID-19 outbreak, will support this by giving staff increased confidence to support their colleagues, children and young people, and local knowledge so that they know how and where to access appropriate specialist support where needed. Schools can also draw on existing guidance and evidence that we have already made available to support effective whole school approaches. This includes Public Health England guidance on whole school approaches and wellbeing measurement (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-children-and-young-peoples-emotional-health-and-wellbeing) and our Mental Health and Behaviour Guidance (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mental-health-and-behaviour-in-schools--2) and this advice aims to help schools to support pupils whose mental health problems manifest themselves in behaviour.

In addition, in September 2020, the department made health education compulsory for pupils in all state-funded schools. In health education, there is a strong focus on mental wellbeing; pupils will be taught how to recognise the early signs of mental wellbeing concerns and where and how to seek support, amongst many other mental health-related topics. We published the mental wellbeing module ahead of the other Relationships, Health and Sex Education modules to make sure that teachers felt confident to address the mental wellbeing needs of their pupils.

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