Children’s Wellbeing and Mental Health: Schools

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Madeleine Moon

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Nicola Blackwood)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I thank the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), his colleagues and the Children’s Society for initiating this debate. As ever, I pay tribute to his continuing personal commitment to improving mental health services, not only as my predecessor but also through chairing the commission on children and young people’s mental health for the Education Policy Institute. That work has been extremely valuable to us.

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that today’s debate is both timely and hugely important. As many colleagues have demonstrated in their comments, we know the distress that mental health problems cause to individuals and those who care for them. Some 10% of children have a diagnosable disorder—700,000 in the UK—and they are twice as likely to leave school with no qualifications, four times more likely to become drug dependent and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. He could not have put it better. There is a compelling moral, as well as social and economic, case for change. We know that if we can get our children and young people the help and support they need early on, when problems first arise, we can make sure that the problems do not become entrenched. That is why the Prime Minister was clear in her determination to improve mental health services and tackle the burning injustice of those with mental ill health having a shorter life expectancy.

As has been discussed, the measures announced by the Prime Minister particularly tackle children and young people’s mental wellbeing and build on the substantial work already in train to implement “Future in mind”. We will continue that work, so that we can go further and faster in intervening earlier more often. In driving those reforms forward, one of the challenges we still face—the right hon. Member for North Norfolk identified this when he was a Minister—is the “fog” when trying to identify and pinpoint the best treatment and support for those with mental health problems. We need to base policies on the most robust evidence possible, so that we can be sure that we are providing the care that people need at the right time and in the right way.

That is why the Department for Education is conducting a large-scale school survey on the activities and approaches used in schools to support children and young people’s mental health in order to find out what works best, and why the Prime Minister requested that the Care Quality Commission undertake an in-depth thematic review—the first of its kind. That is also why we are carrying out a prevalence survey on children and young people’s mental health—the first since 2004, which was before YouTube, Twitter or Snapchat. The survey will look at issues such as cyber-bullying and the impact of social media for the first time, and it is on course to report in 2018. It will fill an important gap in our understanding.

As the right hon. Member for North Norfolk knows, I believe very strongly that transparency in mental health services has lagged behind that in acute services. At a national level, data on children and young people’s mental health services were included in the new mental health services data set for the first time in January. It is still early days, but as collection improves, new metrics to monitor delivery are becoming available. We know from experience in acute services that that does improve accountability, standards and safety for patients. I will respond in detail to the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) about her letter—I do not have time to do that properly right now—but we are looking at how we can drive accountability, eradicate all shadow of confusion from clinical commissioning groups about how they should be reporting, and make sure that we get that data set exactly right. As recommended by the taskforce, we will publish a 10-year research strategy to ensure that the evidence-gathering is sustained. A new policy research unit for mental health will be established in 2017 to make sure that the research continues to become a reality.

While all the evidence-gathering is going on, we cannot stand still. That is why we will press ahead with the implementation of “Future in mind”. As the right hon. Member for North Norfolk said, some areas are performing well and improving, some need to get the message about why this is important, and others are coming from such a low base that they are still working on capacity building, so we are not seeing evidence of improvement yet, but we are clear that we are ambitious not only to deliver “Future in mind” but to go further upstream and intervene earlier to prevent problems. The evidence base that we are building will come together to support the publication of the Green Paper, with increasing focus on preventive activity across all delivery partners. The Prime Minister committed initially to a new focus on schools, colleges and local NHS services working more closely together to provide dedicated children and young people’s mental health services. We are supporting schools and the NHS to develop work by evaluating models and approaches and exploring the impact that closer working can have. We will initially support that by funding the provision of mental health first aid training for teachers in secondary schools—we know that that works. That is our start. I am going to do the training in the next few weeks, to see exactly why it works.

As we know, the Prime Minister also launched a refreshed programme of activity on peer support in schools and online to help young people, through providing access to well-trained mentors, as well as comprehensive support structures to help identify issues and prevent them from escalating.

[Mrs Moon]

I urge the Minister to make sure that the Government look at best practice across the devolved Administrations. It is not a case of reinventing the wheel; let us look at what works elsewhere and incorporate that.

[Nicola Blackwood]

Absolutely. We are also looking at increasing support for schools by finding the evidence of what is proven to work in their approaches to mental wellbeing. That will be achieved by a programme of randomised control trials of promising preventive programmes across the country. As the hon. Lady also mentioned, the refreshed suicide strategy has a particular focus on self-harm, which is causing so many problems in schools.

To make the measures work and to see the progress that we so desperately need, we have to work closely with colleagues across Government. As colleagues have said, schools and colleges have an important role to play in supporting children and young people’s mental health. That role is not only laid out in statutory safeguarding guidance but is one of the four areas of Ofsted judgment in the new common inspection framework.

Colleagues are right: if we are to expect schools to play this role, we must give them the right training and resources. In 22 pilot areas, which include 255 schools across the country, NHS England has been trialling a single point of contact in schools. That programme has tested improvements in joint working between school settings and specialist mental health services—particularly improvements in local knowledge and identification of mental health issues—and it aims to develop and maintain effective local referral routes to specialist services to ensure that children and young people have timely access to specialist support where required. It is also testing the idea of a lead contact in schools and specialist mental health services and examining how different areas choose to put that into practice. The work is being independently evaluated by Ecorys, and the final report will be available in the spring. The question is whether that system is more effective than having an individual counsellor in every school. We are looking at that.

Other support available includes Government-funded PSHE Association guidance, and lesson plans on how to teach mental health across all four key stages. A range of training on how to recognise specific mental health issues is available to all professionals who work with young people through the MindEd website; our analytics have shown that teachers are the largest single group of registered users on the MindEd tool. As the shadow Minister said, mental health and wellbeing is an evolving and vital area of education, and we need to make sure that it is fit for children growing up in modern Britain, so the DFE is looking again at the case for further action on PSHE and sex education provision, with particular regard to improving quality and accessibility. I am sure that it will keep the House updated on that.

The right hon. Member for North Norfolk is absolutely right that school counselling can turn around a child’s whole life trajectory, so schools are encouraged to provide counselling services, and the DFE has produced guidance on good school-based counselling as part of a whole-school approach to wellbeing. It has also published advice on behaviour and mental health, which provides teachers with information, and with tools to help them identify pupils who need help and to give effective early support in understanding when a referral to a specialist mental health service may be necessary. An advisory group, including sector experts and young people, looked at what good peer support for mental health and wellbeing looks like and considered how to encourage good practice in schools, community groups and online. There is much greater recognition that the earlier we pick up these things, the better it is for young people and their mental health.

The “Children and Young People’s Mental Health: Time to Deliver” report from the right hon. Member for North Norfolk found that we are making progress in many areas of the country, but not nearly enough to be complacent. I agree completely with that. We are restless in our ambition not only to drive delivery of “Future in mind” in all areas, but to go further and deliver upstream interventions to prevent problems, rather than waiting until the need for treatment. I hope that I have convinced the right hon. Gentleman that this is an area to which we are fully committed, and that we will continue to drive forward with his agenda.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of supporting children’s wellbeing and mental health in a school environment.