Mental Health Services in Schools and Colleges

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for tabling this debate today and for enabling us to share our concerns about the lack of support for young people with mental health issues. I am conscious, as other noble Lords have said, that we have had several debates here on the broader issues in recent weeks, but it is useful for us to have the opportunity to look specifically at the educational aspects of the crisis. It is clear that we have the same concerns as other noble Lords and I may raise the same issues, but I hope that they will register with the Minister none the less.

It is an issue that has forced itself on to my radar through the simple fact that it is so frequently raised with me when I have been out and about visiting schools. Teachers, without any prompting, when I want to talk to them about other issues, want to talk to me about the stresses and strains that they experience when trying to deal with mental health issues among their pupils. There is a real sense of frustration and abandonment from them. They feel that they have been left alone to cope with increasingly complex cases, where in the past the children and adolescent mental health services would have stepped in to help.

As noble Lords have said, schools are seeing a rise in mental health problems and a drop in available support. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, pointed out, there is also an alarming delay in getting access to professional help even when a problem has been identified.

In a recent study conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, almost 90% of teachers said that they had had to provide more support for such pupils in the past two years, while 43% said that they were finding it harder to access services. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, made the point that teachers need more support, as responsibility seems to be falling increasingly on their shoulders at the expense of anyone else. But only 9% felt that they had been given enough training to help them spot the signs of mental illness, 43% said that the training was inadequate and 32% had received no training at all—again, a point that I know a number of noble Lords have already made.

Noble Lords have given a number of examples of the rising incidence of young people’s mental health problems. Mention has been made of the report produced by the charity, YoungMinds, which showed that the number of young people with depression nearly doubled between the 1980s and 2000s. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, one in 10 young people has a mental health disorder. In an average classroom, 10 young people will have witnessed their parents separate; eight will have experienced severe physical violence, sexual abuse or neglect; one will have experienced the death of a parent; and seven will have been bullied. It is becoming a more complex and stressful world for those young people.

Then there are the more recent trends towards self-harm and eating disorders. During the past 10 years, the number of young people, mainly women, needing hospital treatment for an eating disorder has increased by 172%. These are some of the real challenges for the school and college community to manage, and so far we have not been doing enough to help and support them.

Sadly, we have been dealing with the legacy of the previous education Minister, Michael Gove, whom Paul Burstow, a former health Minister said recently was,

“just not interested in mental health and wellbeing”,

and I endorse that assessment. Obviously, I welcome the Government’s announcement in the Budget that mental health services for young people will receive an extra £1.25 billion over the next five years. There is a considerable amount of catching up to do since CAMHS have been starved of cash so long. I also welcome the Government’s report, Future in Mind, which includes some excellent first steps for improving school support. But more needs to be done.

The point has been made consistently that early intervention is key. Many young people, for example, do not have the language or confidence to talk about their anxieties. The PSHE curriculum is an excellent forum for giving young people the understanding, resilience and life skills to cope with pressures in the modern world, so it continues to be a source of frustration that the Government are not prepared to make PSHE compulsory in all schools. Will the Minister indicate whether the current Secretary of State is prepared to review that decision?

Does the Minister also see the advantage of counselling in schools as an effective early intervention strategy for young people, which can help to prevent mental health problems from developing? What are the Government doing to end the postcode lottery of access to counsellors? Does she also agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that we need universal access to counselling services in school?

Does the Minister also accept that encouraging women’s sports and building body confidence can play an important role in boosting the health and self-esteem of young women? Does she share our frustration that the Olympic legacy has been squandered, with fewer young people doing sports at a senior level? What more are the Government doing to promote healthy living and fitness throughout the school curriculum, particularly in light of the recent public health cuts?

At the same time, we could be doing more to educate young people about the physical changes that their brains undergo in adolescence. For example, during this time, the connections that develop empathy, rational thought, attention, concentration and judgment become more strained. Does the Minister agree that young people need help to understand their mental as well as their physical development? As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, understanding the part played by role models and boundaries in adolescent development is really important.

Does the Minister acknowledge that the Government’s obsession with passing exams is adding stress and anxiety to young people who are already struggling to survive in a complex and demanding world? Does she recognise that a strong cultural offering of art, drama, music and literature can often offer an important release for young people struggling with ways to express their identities and anxieties? What are the Government doing to put these subjects back at the heart of the curriculum?

Will the Minister agree to revisit the mandate given to Ofsted so that it measures a school’s success in promoting emotional well-being as well as academic success? This should include evidence of a whole-school approach to mental health where children are encouraged to talk about their feelings and seek help when necessary, and where good relationships exist with counselling services, educational psychologists and CAMHS.

The role of schools and colleges in enabling early intervention in mental health is absolutely critical. As has been said, more than half of adults with long-term mental health issues were diagnosed as children, but less than half received treatment at the time. The economic and personal cost of leaving young people’s mental health to deteriorate without support until it becomes an acute illness is vast. For every young person in a bed costing around £25,000 a month, we have to ask whether the money would not be better spent on early intervention and prevention. That should start with young people in schools. These are the challenges that face every Government, but particularly this one today, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.