Mental Health: Children
(asked on 18th April 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to support families to understand the importance of developing the mental health and wellbeing of their children; and if he will make a statement.
The Department is taking a number of steps to support parents in the care of their children’s mental health and wellbeing.
‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision: a Green Paper’, published by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education in December 2017 aims to ensure joined up working between school and healthcare settings through its proposals, now being implemented, to create new Mental Health Support Teams in and around schools, and incentivise schools and colleges to identify and train a Senior Mental Health Lead. Mental Health Support Teams, the first cohort of which started training in January 2019, will work closely with parents and carers to support children with their mental health. This will include working directly with parents on evidence-based interventions, such as parent-led cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety or assisting with parent training for conduct problems, as well as supporting parents where interventions are delivered directly to children and young people.
For very young children, Public Health England's Start4Life information service for parents is a programme that helps parents adopt healthy behaviours, including providing advice and practical guidance on promoting the mental health of babies and pre-school age children. Further information is available at the following link:
https://campaignresources.phe.gov.uk/resources/campaigns/2-start4life/overview
Also, the five universal health visitor reviews for all children under five promote positive parent-infant relationships, attachment and language development which are recognised as key factors influencing child mental wellbeing. Further information on the programme is available at the following: