Mindfulness in Schools

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Walker.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) was able to secure the debate, and I thank him for a thorough, informative and thoughtful contribution. Ensuring the wellbeing, happiness and success of our children and young people is a top priority for me, as it is for him. The debate is timely in that, given the change of Government, I have recently taken on departmental responsibility for children’s mental health, which is an area that I feel passionately about and with which I have been involved through my work for children in care.

I am fortunate to have been the Children’s Minister for four years. Throughout, my focus has been on improving the lives of all children in our society, in particular the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. Now, I will be working closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) in her new role as the Under-Secretary of State for Health with direct responsibility for child and adolescent mental health, as well as with ministerial colleagues in other Departments, to ensure that we garner knowledge about and growing evidence for the impact that we can have if we work earlier, more collaboratively and with more conviction to tackle such issues.

One of the Government’s main priorities is to prepare all young people, wherever they live and whatever their background, for life in modern Britain, to ensure that they all have the opportunity to develop necessary character and resilience and to grow up to become well-rounded individuals who can make a positive contribution to society. I am in no doubt that positive wellbeing—emotional, as well as physical and mental—the ability to cope with life’s challenges, and good mental health are key aspects in achieving just that. We still have a long way to go, but we are working hard to make real and lasting improvements. We all have to acknowledge that, historically, the importance of good mental health has not been prioritised in the same way as physical health, despite the fact that the impact of poor mental health can be just as profound on young people’s education, overall health and life chances.

That alone will not compensate for all the years in which the area has been underfunded and under-prioritised, but yes, we have committed £1.4 billion in funding to turn around and transform services, asking local areas to identify the needs of their local populations and to look at developing new approaches, in particular those focused on upstream investment in preventive approaches. At the same time, national organisations such as the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which I co-chair, are working to improve all aspects of internet safety, including on cyber-bullying and self-harm.

As the hon. Member for Scunthorpe said, and as we know from a 2004 study by the Office for National Statistics, about one in 10 children and young people had a diagnosable mental health disorder—the equivalent of three in every classroom—and another four or five in each class had poor mental health. That was 12 years ago, and due to the huge and in some ways unimaginable changes in society since then, young people are growing up in a very different environment from the one in which we grew up and are facing a whole new set of challenges. A ChildLine report published in January suggested that modern-day pressures such as cyber-bullying and social media are affecting children’s confidence and self-esteem. Children cannot unplug from their online world, and that is changing the shape of many of their relationships and the pressures that they come under at a much more tender age. In order to understand much better the impact of that, the Department of Health is undertaking a prevalence survey to look at the state of the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people across the country. When that survey’s findings are reported in 2018, they will give us a comprehensive and far clearer picture of what young people need.

There is still much more for us to learn and do to enable all children to enjoy good mental health and emotional wellbeing, and I completely agree that schools and colleges have a vital role in achieving that. That is where mindfulness—a modern innovation born from the deepest traditions of meditation—comes in. Such approaches, which focus on building skills and resilience to help children and young people to be far more aware of their own mental health and give them the confidence to ask for help when they need it, have the potential to be incredibly useful when used in school and college settings.

I have been interested for a while in how mindfulness can be used to help children and young people to focus their attention and develop their concentration skills—a real problem for many youngsters at a much younger age than ever before. I have also been struck by the testimony of many teachers and pupils—we have heard more of that today—who have adopted this approach and found that they are calmer, more fulfilled and better able to deal with stress and anxiety. I took an interest in mindfulness because my dad was on “Desert Island Discs” earlier this year, and he spoke about some of the moments of acute stress in his life and the debilitating effect that often has, and about the importance of being able to talk to someone about that in the hope that help can be given, coping strategies can be worked out and stress can be pre-empted and prevented from developing in the first place. Again, from what I know, much of that appears to be at the heart of what mindfulness is all about.

Many schools successfully use mindfulness approaches such as those offered by the Mindfulness in Schools project, and some of our teaching schools, including the Alliance for Learning, offer mindfulness training to other schools, both as part of their staff continuing professional development and as a way of supporting their pupils. Anthony Seldon, the former head of Wellington College, is a strong advocate of that approach. I am keen to learn more about the impact of such courses and would welcome the opportunity to hear more about such approaches from members of the all-party parliamentary group—I am grateful to one of its co-chairs, the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), for taking part in the debate—and to visit one of the mindfulness programmes in action. I am not sure whether we will necessarily end up in Wales, but I am sure that we will find a school that will give me a really good insight into the positive impact that mindfulness is having on its pupils and staff, and on the wider community.

It is important that schools and colleges are able to choose programmes and interventions that are right for them and their pupils. No single approach will be right in all circumstances, and it can be difficult for schools and colleges to know what is safe and most effective to offer to their pupils. Rightly, our first step is to have a better understanding of what schools and colleges are doing, so we are in the process of conducting a large-scale survey to ask them what approaches and interventions they use and which they find are the most effective. Mindfulness is specifically mentioned in that survey, so when the report is published early next year, we will have a much better idea about what is being provided and what difference it is making. That report will add to the evidence that is already being collected by the Oxford Mindfulness Centre through its mindfulness and resilience in adolescence research project, as the hon. Member for Scunthorpe said, not to mention the APPG’s report, which I have had the opportunity to read.

Because schools need to decide what is best for their pupils, our approach is to support them by providing information, support, advice and guidance about the many options available to them. We have focused on four key areas of support: prevention, identification, early support and access to specialist help. The prevention strand covers a range of activities and programmes that raise awareness of mental health and emotional wellbeing and promote resilience. We want schools to have a whole-school approach that makes talking about feelings, emotions and wellbeing as normal for pupils as talking about their physical bodies. That might include lessons taught as part of the PSHE curriculum, whole-school programmes such as mindfulness that become a normal part of the school day, role play in drama lessons, or offering meditation or yoga sessions, which I know the hon. Gentleman is particularly keen on. I am a pilates man myself, but they both help mind as well as body.

Improving identification of potential problems, including increasing awareness of those who might be vulnerable to such problems, will help everyone to become more aware of the warning signs of a problem and help children and young people to become more confident about asking for help. Often, one of the biggest barriers is that they do not have that confidence.

Our voluntary and community sector grants programme has allowed us to support schools and teachers by working with the likes of the Anna Freud Centre and Place2Be, which develop really good programmes that enrich teachers’ knowledge, promote mental health education throughout the whole school and offer targeted support for those who need it. Teachers’ knowledge of mental health is supported through resources such as the excellent MindEd, which includes a module on mindfulness, and by funding new and existing projects such as MindEd for Families and the YoungMinds helpline for parents, we have been able to help to support identification outside school settings. One of the difficulties is that some problems are trapped away from the school, and that work is about how we manage to bring them to the surface by making children feel confident that even in the family setting, there is help for them should they need it.

When problems occur, early support can help to prevent them from getting worse. Schools and colleges have put in place a range of practices that are effective, such as having a named adult whom young people know they can turn to, or providing access to a school counsellor, as most schools already do. Many young people also want the option of talking safely to their peers about their concerns, so we are looking at what is involved in creating and running a good peer support programme. I was delighted that nearly 2,000 young people responded to our call for evidence, ensuring that their voices will be at the heart of what happens next, and we will publish our findings in the autumn.

However, there are still many circumstances in which despite all our best efforts, children and young people need to access specialist mental health support. To help improve joint working between education and health professionals, we have been part of a £3 million pilot with NHS England over the past year that has provided joint training to staff and tested how having a single point of contact in schools and child and adolescent mental health services can improve referrals to specialist services. The outcomes of that pilot are being independently evaluated, and we are looking at how we can share that learning and best practice so that more children can benefit from similar bespoke support.

Although mindfulness is only one way of addressing the stresses and strains of modern life, it is becoming more widely known and used, and I am sure more widely appreciated. Its definition, which is set out in the APPG report—

“paying attention to what’s happening in the present moment in the mind, body and external environment, with an attitude of curiosity and kindness”—

is one that we should all heed when bouncing blindly from one day to the next. That is why I welcome the opportunity to get off the treadmill for a few hours and visit a school so I can perhaps practise some mindfulness myself.

As the evidence base grows and best practice becomes better known, mindfulness has the potential to play an important role in providing children and young people with the mental and emotional resilience that they need to fulfil their potential. That, I think, is what they call optimistic thinking.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered mindfulness in schools.