School-based Counselling Services

Paul Bristow Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this really important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it.

Since I was elected, I have been working with young people from Peterborough schools on mental health services for children and young people. I am so lucky to have in my city a group of talented, passionate young people who are ready and willing to offer their time to work with their MP on this important issue. I genuinely consider it a privilege to be working with many of them. The speech that I am making today has in part been drafted by those young people; they have provided me with quotes, statistics and testimony. So I would like to thank Darya Robson, Charlotte Hemens, Amelia Lawson, Austeya Dalansamskita and Amira Dinari for all that they have done. They have done superb work and they make me proud of Peterborough.

It is well documented that there has been an increasing demand for mental health services for children and young people, much of it because of the measures taken to prevent the spread of covid. A recent survey by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reported that ChildLine helped as many as 67 children with suicidal thoughts a day. In my region, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust had 1,625 urgent referrals in the month of May 2021 alone, of which 795 were for potentially life-threatening conditions. We are facing a mental health crisis in our young people and the more that we can support them by providing access to early intervention in the form of in-school counselling, the better things will be.

The group of young people I have been working with has also been working with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group to secure a system with a single point of referral and a new website. The group approached me last week to request that I participate in this debate and campaign for school-based counselling, which I am more than happy to do.

In 2020, amid the first wave of the covid pandemic, one in six children aged five to 19 was identified as having a probable mental health disorder—up from one in nine before the pandemic. School should be the one safe place where every child can feel valued, cared for and accepted. It is the perfect place for students who are suffering with their mental health to access an on-site qualified counsellor.

I feel that the current systems and mechanisms for mental health provision are not serving young people as they should. In 2019, more than half of GP referrals to child and adolescent mental health services in the UK were rejected on the grounds that the symptoms were not severe enough. Although other services such as NHS mental health support teams are being developed, they are patchy in coverage and tend to focus on parental interventions. They are no substitute for on-site access to a qualified counsellor.

All the evidence, including research undertaken in my county, supports early intervention to prevent an issue from becoming a full-blown crisis. School-based counselling can provide an alternative option for young people who have nowhere else to turn. The young people I have been working with are from a range of schools and colleges; some are fortunate enough to have a school-based counsellor, but others are not.

Students who benefit from easily accessible on-site counselling testify that they feel more comfortable talking with a professional with whom they have a long-term relationship because of their presence in the school community. They also emphasise the overwhelming advantage from not missing education time by leaving school for external mental health appointments; a pre-covid study found that absence due to poor mental health accounted for more than 13% of school days lost. Students who have this option are also free from the burden of waiting times, referral lists and possible rejection for not meeting criteria, and are less likely to need access to emergency services.

Providing school-based counselling means that no student slips through the net. Students from schools and colleges that are not able to offer the service tell a different story. One group I met spoke of having access only to a trainee counsellor, who was limited in the support that they could provide, meaning that students waited a long time to access a non-qualified counsellor, only to be signposted to outside organisations. One student told me:

“Having a qualified counsellor would increase the attendance and engagement of students. More importantly it would mean that students can get the support they need without having to reach a crisis point before any action is taken. It would mean that students felt safer and more willing to seek the help they need without feeling like a burden.”

The pandemic has put an enormous strain on our young people. I believe that we owe it to them to ensure that they have the support that they need at the place where they need it: their school or college. I therefore urge Ministers to listen carefully to the voices of young people from a variety of schools in my constituency, including Peterborough School, the King’s School, Thomas Deacon Academy and St John Fisher School—lots of schools in my constituency have taken the time to contact me about the subject. Will Ministers please outline what they will do to get more counsellors based in schools?