School-based Counselling Services

Nicholas Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of school-based counselling services.

Let me start by saying how grateful I am to the Backbench Business Committee for affording me almost half a day for this topic. I thank my friends throughout the House for making the case to the Committee, and I particularly thank my friend the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who has joined me in sponsoring the neutral proposition on which the debate is based.

It is estimated that in England, one in eight young people—13% of those aged between five and 19—are living with diagnosable mental health disorders. They include depression, anxiety, and conduct disorder, which is a type of behavioural problem. While the announcement earlier this year of extra funding for young people’s mental health services is welcome, it is targeted specifically at the extra dimensions of the problem caused by covid within schools. The problem was there before. It has grown, and it needs to be addressed. The services were under pressure before the pandemic, and they remain so now.

The Children’s Society tells us that 75% of young people are not receiving the help that they need, and 34% of those who manage to be referred to NHS services are not accepted for treatment. Public Health England says that in the north-east the number of pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs is higher than the national average, and the same is true in respect of hospital admissions resulting from 10 to 24-year-olds self-harming. This is an issue for the country, but it is a particular issue for our region.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting an excellent and very timely speech, and congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. I do not know whether he has seen the data, but does he share my concern that there seems to have been a much steeper increase in the mental health challenges faced by girls throughout their secondary school years than has been the case among boys? By the time they leave secondary school, girls have had almost twice as many contacts with mental health services as boys. Many of those challenges could potentially have been avoided if there were proper counselling in schools, for which I am sure my right hon. Friend will be making the case. Moreover, if boys are more reluctant to come forward for that help, is that not also a problem demonstrated by the data?

[Mr Brown]

Whatever the cause, the problem is clear enough, and it needs to be addressed. My hon. Friend is right to make the point, and she is also right to suggest that the roots of this, particularly in our region and the city that we both represent, are to be found in deprivation and in poverty. That is a particular feature of our region, and my hon. Friend spoke about it very movingly in the earlier debate. We know that mental health issues have a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable children, and the roots of that are in social deprivation. It is a particular problem in my own constituency. In 2014, 27% of children in east Newcastle lived in poverty; the latest figure, for 2019-20, is 38%, and it is increasing year on year.

The north-east of England is bearing the brunt of the increase in child poverty, with all 12 local authorities within the north-east region in the top 20 authorities that have seen the highest increase across England as a whole. The last Labour Government boosted the life chances and welfare of children, and I am proud to being a part of that. Policies such as Sure Start, working tax credits and well-funded family-friendly public services ensured that every child had a positive start in life. How far we have slid from that, and how misguided and mistaken we were to get ourselves into that position.

I particularly want to make the case for services for the disabled, whether they have a physical disability or mental health problems. I recently met representatives of the National Deaf Children’s Society who told me about the disproportionate impact that the coronavirus lockdowns have had on the mental health of deaf children. Measures taken to fight covid, such as the widespread wearing of face masks, particularly in the classroom, have led to communication difficulties for deaf children. As a result, 60% of deaf children have indicated that their mental health has worsened, and 58% have reported feeling isolated and lonely. Many felt that services relied too much on the telephone for booking appointments, and others did not like the fact that some appointments were now available only on the telephone.

I also want to say something about the special needs and significant mental health problems that child refugees face when they enter the United Kingdom and, eventually, the school system. I have received a substantial amount of casework regarding the situation in Afghanistan, including many requests for help to leave that country. I do my best to help my constituents, and I know that other MPs are in the same position. On the point about ring-fenced funding for mental health support in schools, I have written to the Home Secretary on behalf of my constituents and I look forward to receiving a response. It is a specific problem and it requires a specific response.

Existing provision of schools-based counselling is patchy. There is currently no legal requirement on schools in England to provide counselling services. There is, however, a specific requirement for such provision in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I understand that the Department for Education does not routinely collect school workforce data that would allow us to identify how many schools directly employed their own counsellors. Some employ their own, and some link up with other schools and share a counsellor. We know that provision is varied. Some have more casual arrangements with the voluntary sector or local authority partners. Some simply do not offer any school-based provision, and instead refer children to an external service.

There is a demand to make schools-based counselling services more consistent. More than two thirds of young people would prefer to be able to access mental health support without going through their GP. The Government’s roll-out of mental health support teams goes some way towards meeting the lower-level mental health support needs of children by offering group work and cognitive behavioural therapy for emerging issues. However, by 2023, the new teams will reach only about 30% of schools and colleges, leaving a worrying 70% with no additional early help or support other than funds that may be accessed directly via the education recovery plan.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There are many charities, particularly children’s charities, across the United Kingdom that I can think of, such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo’s and Mind, that have a great grasp and knowledge of where the real priorities need to be. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that when the Government reply, they should listen to the organisations that know, and then deliver a strategy that can help with these situations?

[Mr Brown]

I have a relatively open mind on the particular route that should be taken to meet these issues head-on, and I have no ideological objection to a role for the voluntary sector or for those who want to contribute, but—at least in England—the state must take a lead. Things cannot be left as they are. I believe that school-based counselling, regardless of which organisation provides it, could fill the gap between those mental health support teams in schools and the national health service’s child and adolescent mental health services. There are limits to voluntarism, of course, and we would need the people delivering the service in the schools to have some form of qualification and understanding of what they are doing.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy makes that point and is campaigning on these issues. Schools-based counselling is a proven intervention for children and young people experiencing psychological distress. Some 50% of mental health disorders are present by the age of 14, increasing to 75% by the age of 18, so early intervention is key, as it is with many of these issues.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has just mentioned the statistics about early intervention. In the previous debate we were talking about investment in children at a young age. Does he agree that targeted investment in these young people is not just good for those individuals but makes economic common sense, in that the payback will be that we have productive and stable members of society?

[Mr Brown]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It also relieves pressure on the national health service in the longer term, because the NHS tends to end up as the service of last resort—a role it shares with the police, equally unfairly in my view.

I commend the efforts of the Tyne & Wear Citizens group, which has been working to raise the profile of schools-based counselling and with which I have had regular meetings. The group has set out three core principles that a successful schools-based counselling programme ought to follow: first, that services should be co-operative and inclusive, including the use of digital wellbeing tools, telephone counselling and face-to-face sessions at school or external venues; secondly, that services should be collaborative and liaise with external agencies such as social services and the police where it is appropriate to do so and, thirdly, that services should be consistent, provided by those trained on a nationally recognised course, registered with a professional body and experienced in working with school-age children.

In concluding my contribution to this debate, I want to say something about the schools-based counselling programme in place in the Newcastle East NEAT Academy Trust in my constituency. I have nothing but praise for the project itself and the enthusiastic support that it is receiving from the broader schools community; my right hon. Friend will remember it well, because he used to be a councillor for the local government ward that it serves.

The project has found clear signs of improvement in educational attainment for around one in three of the pupils who received counselling. There was a significant improvement in pupils’ achieving their personal goals, with an 85% improvement in reported progress towards achieving these goals. No child reported a sharp deterioration in progress.

The counsellor—not a local government-type councillor but a schools-based counsellor—in the trial that is taking place has told me that embedding the counselling service as part of the whole-school approach is vital to removing the stigma around mental health and promoting a culture shift in the community. She has reported high levels of engagement in the programme and has stressed that demand is increasing. In order to reach more children and young people in crisis and to prevent future mental health issues from developing, I am convinced that the project has made a strong case for more school-based counsellors delivering interventions.

Were the Government to continue to take an interest in this way, it should be possible to achieve something more. I give them credit for tentatively seeing the need to intervene in this area and I hope that today’s debate, across the Floor of the House, reinforces their appetite for further action.

[Several hon. Members rose—]