Children and Young People: Mental Health

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Cotter]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in implementing the proposals for support for mental health provision for children and young people in schools, set out in the December 2017 Green Paper, Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, following publication of the Green Paper in December, we are working across health and education to explore options for implementing the proposals, which will be informed by responses from the consultation. This includes consideration of training programmes for the designated leads and mental health support teams, delivery of the four-week waiting time pilot and criteria and processes for selecting the trailblazers. We will publish a response to the consultation in due course.

[Lord Cotter (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. As we all know, mental illness is an increasing concern. It is good that the Green Paper to which he referred has been produced. Appendix B refers specifically to schools and says that,

“68% have a designated member of staff”,

for mental health. However, does the Minister not agree that it is equally important that teachers are fully trained and involved in the process of dealing with mental health, since, unwittingly, they can exacerbate young people’s lack of confidence? For example, I heard recently of a young person who needs encouragement being told by a teacher, “Your mother did this work for you”. Teachers need training to deal with this issue.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Lord hits on an important point. Not only is mental illness unfortunately rising in prevalence, but it is everybody’s responsibility to try to help young people who suffer from it. That is what lies behind the proposals in the Green Paper, which contains a number of elements. He is quite right: there is additional training that will be applicable for all teachers, in mental health first aid, for example. It will also make sure that pupils understand it, changing the PHSE curriculum for more focus on mental health and well-being. That is why the designated leads are so important, because they bring that together at school level. So I agree with the noble Lord that schools have a critical role to play in dealing with this problem of mental health.