Schools (Mental Health Professionals) Bill [HL]

Baroness Barran Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I also offer my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on securing a Second Reading for her Bill. I thank all those noble Lords who shared their personal experiences of how the mental health issues of their children and wider families have had an impact on them. I join noble Lords in recognising the extraordinary job that our schools do in supporting pupils every single day and, of course, I thank those charities that work in our schools and outside them to support young people.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Wyld for stressing the importance of good attendance as a protective factor for children’s mental health. As she rightly said, the Government approach this with a very caring intention. There must be boundaries around it as well as consequences in certain cases where children do not attend and parents facilitate that without good reason. The intention is clear. Of course, enabling children and young people to thrive is a priority for this Government, which is why we actively explore approaches that could improve young people’s mental health and well-being.

Of course, I welcome the noble Baroness’s tireless commitment to ensuring that mental health support is available for all children, but I must express reservations about this Bill. As the noble Baroness acknowledged, most schools already have in place mental well-being provision, including counsellors, educational psychologists and pastoral support staff. All of those can play a valuable role, but maintaining a school’s flexibility to choose what works best for its pupils is paramount. For instance, depending on their needs, not all children will benefit from specific mental health interventions such as psychotherapeutic counselling. Schools are well placed to decide which approach will be most effective, drawing on specialists where necessary.

Beyond this, it is important to reiterate that schools are not health services and should not be expected to act like one in terms of managing specialist staff. They may choose to do so where they have appropriate expertise, but we believe that our current approach, which encourages collaboration with specialist services where appropriate, avoids putting the extra role and burden on schools that the Bill would involve.

On the co-ordination between the health service and schools, my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough asked, specifically in relation to Tourette’s syndrome, whether there is co-ordination between the two departments. We are more broadly taking a joint approach to workforce planning and reforms to the special educational needs and AP systems. There is an implementation board, chaired jointly by Education Ministers and Health Ministers.

Returning to our schools, our aim is for schools to be a place where positive well-being is promoted and mental health difficulties are picked up on early, with referral to specialist services as needed—an aim that is being pushed forward through our programme of grants for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges and the continuing rollout of mental health support teams. My noble friend Lady Berridge asked about the take-up of grants for senior leaders in different areas, including whether schools with particularly high levels of disadvantage had lower take-up. I do not have that specific data for her, but we know that lower take-up has been seen in London, the east Midlands and the east of England, so we are working hard there to encourage higher take-up.

The Government’s focus, as many noble Lords have advocated, is to support schools to develop a whole-school approach. That wider approach to well-being works alongside more specialist support, which is why we agree with the spirit of the Bill, if not its specificity. That is why we have a comprehensive plan to roll out mental health support teams, including access to education and mental health practitioners, who deliver interventions and support schools to develop their whole-school approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked whether there was more focus on mental health in the initial teacher training and early career framework. The very recently updated framework, published in the past few weeks, has a much greater integration of special educational needs and disabilities, including mental health within that. We expect these teams to cover at least 50% of pupils by April 2025.

We come to the issue of funding, which a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, mentioned. He will understand very well that it takes time to train mental health professionals. Although I absolutely acknowledge and share the urgency that noble Lords have expressed this afternoon, it is important that we learn from early intervention to make sure that the support team model is as effective as possible—but we are also trying to co-ordinate and take a responsible approach to rollout, working with NHS England to make sure that we do not draw professionals away from the wider mental health workforce, which clearly would not be desirable.

We are also building on the learning from the independent evaluation of the Green Paper programme and data and intelligence from the ground, which will help to shape future delivery. One of the strengths of the mental health support teams is that they are an NHS service focused on supporting schools and pupils in a responsive way. That need for it to feel human, as I think my noble friend Lady Wyld phrased it—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, also referred to the difficulty that people sometimes have in navigating these systems—is absolutely critical. They are specifically trained to do that, and to build those links between sectors.

It is also true that even a significant number of additional staff in mental health support teams cannot provide all the help that pupils need, which is why the range of pastoral support and early interventions that schools already provide, including drawing on counsellors and educational psychologists, is so important. We have been working with the mental health support teams to make sure that they support that provision and do not displace it. But we are concerned that, by specifying just two types of professional support, the Bill is likely to constrain the range of support options that pupils can benefit from, which I know is not the noble Baroness’s intention.

We have also committed to offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, enabling them to introduce effective whole-school approaches. More than 15,000 settings and the great majority of secondary schools have claimed a grant so far. This training and associated support equip schools to offer the right support from the full range of sources, making the best use of their funding.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I do not know whether I picked this up correctly, but I think the Minister said that all schools would have access to mental health support teams by 2025. I thought the figure the Government were aiming for was 50%. Have I got that wrong?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

There are two different elements, and I apologise to the noble Lord if I was not absolutely clear. He is quite right that with the mental health support teams we aim to cover 50% of schools by April 2025. What I was referring to just now was the senior mental health lead training, so that there will be a senior mental health lead in every school, supporting staff in their response and giving them confidence to respond to children, which we know is so vital.

My noble friend Lady Berridge referred to children in secure mental health institutions. I will write to her. We are reviewing and redesigning provision to support the move to more community-based provision closer to home—a concern that my noble friend rightly raised. I am not aware of whether there is updated data on this but if there is, I will share it with my noble friend and put a copy in the House Library.

In conclusion, we believe that, to continue to support children and young people, rather than having a new set of requirements in schools, we should continue with the rigorous implementation of the evidence-based approach exemplified by the mental health support teams and the senior mental health leads. For that reason, we cannot support the noble Baroness’s Bill.