Schools: Mental Health Support Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Storey
Main Page: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Storey's debates with the Department for Education
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberTo ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to develop mental health support in schools.
My Lords, many schools already promote their pupils’ mental health and we are providing significant new support to them. In July, we confirmed our commitment to train mental health leads in schools to develop whole-school approaches to promoting and supporting good mental health. But schools cannot act as mental health experts, so we will also provide increased specialist support from new, clinically supervised mental health support teams.
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. He will be aware that 65% of children and young people who have mental health problems currently get no support. I am aware of the trailblazers but they will take time to be established and teach good practice. We have a resource in schools which, sadly, is underfunded. It has too many vacancies and spends all its time on its statutory responsibility of reviewing cases under the Children and Families Act—I mean, and thus mention, our educational psychologists. Why can we not provide extra resources so that educational psychologists who are in post can do this work to provide support for children and young people with mental health problems?
My Lords, we are improving specialist children’s and young people’s mental health services with our £1.5 billion investment from 2015. We recognise that we need to do more, which is why the NHS will invest at least £2 billion a year in mental health, including children’s services, under the recent Budget proposals. Our Green Paper proposals are about providing support quickly through teams directly linked to schools and testing four-week waiting times for more specialist follow-up. We are absolutely not complacent about this vital area.