Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Brinton]

88: After Clause 38, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty of Secretary of State to give financial assistance for purposes related to mental health provision in schools(1) The Secretary of State must give, or must make arrangements for the giving of, financial assistance to any person for or in connection with the purpose mentioned in subsection (2).(2) The purpose is the provision of—(a) an education mental health practitioner, or(b) a school counsellor,in every state-funded school.(3) In this section— “education mental health practitioner” means a person who possesses a graduate-level or postgraduate-level qualification of that name accredited by Health Education England;“state funded school” means a school in England funded wholly or mainly from public funds, including, but not limited to—(a) an Academy school, an alternative provision Academy or a 16 to 19 Academy established under the Academies Act 2010;(b) community, foundation and voluntary schools (within the meaning of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998).”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to give financial assistance in respect of mental health provision in schools.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 88 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Storey, who cannot be in his place tonight, picks up the debate on mental health support that we started last week with Amendment 8, which would ensure that the mental health of pupils is considered in any standards set relating to health. I said in the debate last Wednesday that the reason that mental health had to be specified in standards—rather than just subsumed into a general reference to health—is because, if it is not so specified, it just does not become a priority. This is even more true if it is not specified in funding arrangements.

The House of Commons Library briefing, Support for Children and Young People’s Mental Health, published on 1 June, says in Chapter 4, on mental health in schools:

“The Government has reiterated that although schools play an important part in promoting mental wellbeing, teachers are not mental health professionals, and need backing from a range of specialised services. There has been work to strengthen partnerships between education providers and mental health services through a pilot linking schools with single points of contact in child and adolescent mental health services … The Government has said the pilot has led to improvements in higher quality and more timely referrals to specialist services for pupils. The pilot initially reached 255 schools and will be extended to 1,200 schools.”


That still leaves over 21,000 schools to go. The briefing went on to say that there were concerns about the provision of mental health support in schools because it is very patchy, and that it

“was noted by the Care Quality Commission … in a 2017 review of CAMHS services … that when pupils can access high-quality counselling through their schools, it can be an effective form of early intervention. However, the CQC said it is not always available, and in some cases, there are concerns about the quality of support on offer.”

In December 2017—four and a half years ago—the Government’s Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, made some proposals that would have set a framework, which included incentivising every school and college to identify and train a designated senior lead for mental health, with relevant training rolled out to all areas by 2025; creating new mental health support teams to work with groups of schools and colleges and the designated senior leads in addressing the problems of children with mild to moderate mental health problems, and providing a link and signpost for children with severe problems; building on existing mental health awareness training so that a member of staff in every primary and secondary school in England receives mental health awareness training; and adding a mental health specific strand within the teaching and leadership innovation fund.

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I will check and follow up with the noble Lord in writing, but I know that having the lead in place means that they can then be the person to whom other staff in the school can go and with whom they can interact, to get guidance and help shape the school’s approach. It is not for the lead to be singly responsible, but they can get training that can then inform other staff as well.

I was just coming on to say that we have put funding in place. Our aim is that all schools will have a lead in place. More than 8,000 schools and colleges in England, including half of all state-funded secondary schools, have taken up this training offer so far. We recently confirmed further grants to offer training to two-thirds of schools and colleges by March 2023, with the ambition that, by 2025, all state-funded primary and secondary schools, as well as colleges, will have had the funding made available to train a senior mental health lead.

In addition to training for senior mental health leads, there are also the mental health teams to which I referred. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, asked for an update on our progress in delivering these. They currently cover 26% of pupils in schools and further education. Our ambition was to cover 25% by next year so we have already met that ambition; indeed, we have raised it to cover 35% of pupils in England by next year.

More broadly, when those specialist teams are in place, they need to be able to refer students to more specialist support where needed. That involves more money going into children’s mental health. I can confirm to noble Lords that there is record NHS funding for children’s mental health services. It will grow faster than the overall NHS budget and faster than adult mental health spending in the coming years. There is more to do, but increased funding and priority are being given to this issue by the Government, not just in schools but in the NHS where those specialist services need to be delivered.

I am grateful for the opportunity to set out again the priority the Government are giving to this issue, the progress we are seeking to make and the approach we think is right to support schools in supporting the mental health of their pupils. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this short debate. Before I respond on Amendment 88, I want to offer my support to the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, for his Amendment 171E, which would require Ofsted to ensure that schools take account of the public sector equality duty to tackle discrimination, promote equality and assess extracurricular activities at the school. It may seem obvious but, at the moment, there seems to be some confusion about that duty and various parts of our public sector; it is good to see the amendment there.

I am grateful for my noble friend Lord Addington’s helpful comments, further to mine, on Amendment 88 and how essential it is to ring-fence mental health funding to ensure that education staff are effectively trained, as well as being supported by CAMHS.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, talked about some excellent initiatives, such as Place2Be. She echoed my concerns about the patchy nature of CAMHS provision and how long severely affected children can wait. Just last week, I heard of a family friend with a daughter who shows clear signs of serious clinical mental health problems. However, the queues at their local CAMHS are such that they have been told that she will be seen only if she is suicidal. She is eight. That is just too late. It also places unacceptable pressure on a little girl, her family and her school. I recognise that this is an NHS problem—I applaud the Government for trying to join some of this up—but it is why we must have some ring-fenced funds: to make sure that the school side of this, the mental health partnership, will actually work.