School-based Counselling Services

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It was an honour to present before the Backbench Business Committee with my friend, the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown).

The repercussions of the pandemic will have a significant impact on children and young people. As the mental health charity, Mind, has pointed out, covid-19 will leave a “deep and lasting scar” on the mental health of millions. The statistics are grim; some have already been cited. In March, my Committee heard from the Royal College of Psychiatrists that there had been a “massive” rise in children self-harming, with a 7% rise among girls aged 11 to 16 since 2017. In 2019-20, the number of children being referred for mental health treatment soared by 60%. We all see these awful statistics in our constituencies. A mother in Harlow came to me and told me that her otherwise healthy child had started compulsively washing her hands until they were raw and bleeding since lockdown and not being at school.

Are our children getting the help that they need? The Children’s Commissioner suggested that the number of children accessing the treatment that they need has increased by just 4%. I believe that there are ways in which we can turn the tide. Let us rocket-boost the Government’s proposals to put mental health professionals in every school, quicker than the current plans. The What Works Centre for Wellbeing has identified that good mental health and wellbeing at age 14 to 15 has a significant impact on educational attainment at age 18. The Department for Education shows that pupils with better emotional wellbeing at age seven were more than one term ahead of pupils with poorer emotional wellbeing. I have seen the impact of organisations such as Place2Be in schools in Harlow, such as Stewards Academy, which benefits from its services.

This is not just about the provision of mental health; it is also about prevention and resilience. Last week, I visited a remarkable school—Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre—where I met students and the headteacher, who described the resilience and preventive work that the school does. It employs a coach to work with students to develop techniques to conquer their anxieties. School assemblies are used to teach the tools needed to manage highly pressured environments, using examples presented by sporting personalities. In private study periods, the desks are set up to resemble an exam hall to help pupils to become familiar with the setting. That is the kind of arsenal that should be replicated in schools around the country.

The second element of prevention must be considering extending the school day for extracurricular activities. I welcome the Government’s £5 billion for educational catch-up, but this should also be about extracurricular activities, because we know that young people who participate in after-school clubs are 20% less likely to suffer from a mental health disorder. The Education Policy Institute found that a longer school day increases educational attainment by two to three months, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport found that an extended school day can boost numeracy skills by 29%.

Why on earth will the Department for Education not at least pilot proper experiments of extended school days in some disadvantaged areas of the country, using civil society to provide those extracurricular activities, so that we can really see the difference they make; and then make that case to the Treasury? Headteachers such as the head at Newham would love to be able to offer their students extracurricular activities, just as the private schools do, but they simply do not have the funding to do so.

The Local Government Association estimates that the annual cost of mental health problems in England is about £119 billion, but rolling out counselling services to all state-funded secondary schools could cost £100 million per annum. That would provide for access to a school counsellor for at least two days a week for more than 90% of schools. It makes economic sense to invest in prevention, given that most mental health problems emerge before the age of 25.

Finally, we know that social media is a wrecking ball for young people’s mental health and wellbeing; it is damaging all of us, but particularly young people. Research from the Education Policy Institute and the Prince’s Trust found the damage that social media is doing to teenagers’ mental health, and 79% of Barnardo’s practitioners reported that children between the ages of 10 and 15 have accessed unsuitable or harmful content. One in three girls said that they were unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14.

The links are clear. Social media providers should not be allowed to duck their responsibilities, and I urge the children’s Minister to work with the Treasury to introduce a mental health levy for social media giants so that they can take responsibility for what is happening to our young children. Ofcom published a report earlier this year that stated that the revenue of social media companies is £4.8 billion. Introducing a 2% levy could create a funding pot of around £100 million, which could be distributed to schools to provide mental health support and digital skills training for our young people to build the resilience and online safety skills that they need. If the social media companies knew that they had to pay the levy, they might at last behave more responsibly towards our young people.

Social media firms and tech giants must do more given that much of the problem is caused by the very apps and platforms that they have built. We must rapidly deliver the commitments in the mental health Green Paper to ensure that there is a mental health professional based in every school—sooner rather than later. Priority should be given to initiatives that support prevention and teach resilience, as I highlighted with the example of Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre. Only by doing so can we deal with this epidemic and ensure that our children and young people emerge from the pandemic resilient and able to climb the education ladder of opportunity.