Mental Health Services in Schools and Colleges

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for tabling this debate. Of course, he has a lifetime’s professional experience in this area and we heard that in what he said.

I begin with his final point, on the mental health of looked-after children and the NSPCC report that he referred to. The Minister may recall from our discussions on early years childcare recently the emphasis put on high-quality early years care and in particular the discussions on the importance of a secure attachment between mother and infant, and of the nursery guarding that secure attachment. Relationships in that early period are key to the mental health and success of these children. What we hear from children in care who have not had that experience is that it becomes vital for them to have a stable foster placement, adoption placement or residential childcare worker and to stay in the same school and build a relationship of trust with an adult who is interested in their welfare over time. The NSPCC report and other reports on looked-after children emphasise that children who enter care have been traumatised. Care’s purpose should be to help them recover from that trauma and fundamental to that is the relationship with the people they value most in their lives—their foster carer and so on. The aim of the health service should be to support that relationship between the teacher and the looked-after child, the foster carer and the young person—although it is important to provide therapy directly to the child—by providing expert support to the parents, social workers and residential childcare workers.

I shall speak about interventions to prevent children needing mental health services in schools and about an important intervention that can be made. I am a patron of a charity called the Institute of Recovery from Childhood Trauma. It had one of its regular seminars yesterday. Dr Robin Banerjee of the University of Sussex showed a diagram that highlighted that the more popular a child is, the better their mental health and the better they do in school. It also showed that the less popular a child is, the poorer his mental health and the less well he does in school. He developed a project with the Mulberry Bush School, of which the Prime Minister is patron, looking at how creative activity can strengthen the bonds between children in school and therefore help unpopular children to manage relationships better and become happier and more successful. It has had very positive results.

I have emphasised the importance of relationships with their peers in stopping children becoming ill, and now I shall concentrate on relationships with adults, particularly teachers but with the whole staff of the school. They are very important in protecting children against poor mental health. The evidence is very clear about the importance of resilient relationships with teachers. Finland is often held up as a great example of an education system. An interesting facet is that from the age of seven, when children start school, they have the same form teacher to the age of 14, I think, but it might even be later. For seven years, they have the same teacher in their lives. It was a great pleasure recently to talk to a Finnish migrant to this country about her experience. She spoke about her affection for her form teacher, whom she knew throughout her development, and the fact that her teacher knew her so well.

To step aside for one moment—I shall come back to this—there is real concern about setting boundaries for young people. If you talk to head teachers, they will talk about the change in our culture. Years ago, if they punished a child, the parents would be right behind them. Today, very often, if they punish a child, the parent will say, “Why are you picking on my child?”. Children and young people going into the criminal justice system often have never had proper boundaries set for them. They do not know what is right or wrong. It is far more effective to have boundaries set by someone one loves than by someone one just fears, so a teacher, a prison officer or a residential childcare worker who has developed a bond of affection and trust with a young person is in a much better position to say, “No you can’t go out tonight”, “No you mustn’t mix with people like that” or “No you shouldn’t drink”, than someone who does not really know them and has to use force and fear to get them to do what is necessary.

I encourage noble Lords to think back to their own schooldays. In my own experience at primary school there was Mrs Dunon; she was beautiful and intelligent, and I was absolutely infatuated with her. I still remember today her pointing to the ring on her finger and explaining to us that by heating the ring up, the atoms vibrated faster, the ring expanded and she could remove it from her finger. I do not know whether that started my love of science, but I certainly developed one over time. I then think back to my science teacher, Mr Brown, and particularly my housemasters, Mr Woolett and Mr Jones-Parry. Mr Jones-Parry was an exceptional teacher and was wonderful in setting boundaries for us. I encourage your Lordships to think about their own relationships with teachers and how important they were in terms of their emotional well-being and in setting boundaries.

I turn to the intervention that I spoke of. This is the consultation and liaison model that is referred to in the Future in Mind report that the Government commissioned. I pay tribute to the charity YoungMinds, of which I am a patron, and which was very much involved in that report. The chapter dealing with the most vulnerable children talks about this liaison and consultation. To paraphrase what it says, often the most effective way to help children with the most complex needs is to have the best professionals working with staff members on building a relationship with the child, so the foster carer, social worker or whoever gets help from a child psychotherapist or clinical psychologist. I shall give your Lordships an example of this: when Emil Jackson, a child psychotherapist, was at the Brent Centre in north London, he provided such a consultation and liaison service to 10 schools in Brent. This meant that school staff—not just teachers, but all staff—could attend seminars and consultations every two or three weeks, and for an hour or two they would take it in turns to present a particular child, talk about their relationship with that child, have the other professionals in the school group help them to think about their relationship with that child, and have that discussion facilitated by Emil Jackson. He found, first of all, that head teachers found it made a real difference to the culture of the school and, secondly, interestingly and importantly, this particular group had a lower sickness absence rate than the rest of the school.

The principal reason for teachers leaving teaching is because they have difficult relationships with their children. If one had this sort of excellent support for teachers, our valuable and experienced teachers would be more likely to remain in the profession. That is another reason why this approach is really important. I remember speaking to a former Teach First graduate—Teach First teachers went into the toughest schools—who said how much he wished they had had that kind of support to help them to manage those kinds of relationships.

I emphasise the fact that we need to support children in their relationships if we want them to be healthy. I am really concerned about the increasing numbers of children growing up without a parent in the family or with one absent parent. When I worked with children I found that I was befriended by boys because they had no father figure in their lives. We need to think about how to engage fathers and keep them engaged, and how to find good male role models where there is no father. I wonder whether Ofsted might be charged with looking at all children’s services, schools and others, to see how effectively it could engage fathers and, where fathers are not available, provide good male role models who would be well supported to make relationships with children who do not have such good male role models in their lives. I look forward to the Minister’s response.