Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to encourage schools to create designated senior leads for mental health.

The Department for Education’s ‘Supporting Mental Health in Schools and Colleges’ survey showed that 49% of all schools and colleges already have a dedicated lead for mental health.

To support these schools, and provide an incentive for more schools to adopt a Designated Senior Lead for mental health, the Government has committed to funding training for a lead in every school over five years, starting from the 2019/20 academic year. The Department is currently assessing the options for providing sufficient high quality training.

The training will be supported by the other proposals set out in the green paper Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision. The Department’s pilot of training to improve joint working between schools and NHS mental health services has been a success, and will be rolled out nationally. This scheme has already helped around 1,000 schools build better links to specialist services through named points of contact in health and education.

The Government is also funding new Mental Health Support Teams working in or near schools to provide earlier access to a wider range of support and treatments and help reduce mental health problems worsening or developing in the first place. These teams will provide school leads with the specialist support they need from qualified mental health professionals.