Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Solihull approach in improving children and adolescents’ wellbeing and mental health; and if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing training for people working in education on that approach.

We are aware of the work that is happening in Solihull to bring about improvements in children and adolescents’ wellbeing and mental health.

The Department for Education has established a joint programme with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England to oversee the delivery of the proposals set out in our Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services green paper. This includes the provision of mental health support teams (MHSTs) linked to groups of schools and colleges and the commitment to provide training for senior mental health leads in all state-funded schools and colleges in England.

Different areas are necessarily taking different approaches to implementation based on their own circumstances. The evaluation of the programme will inform further roll-out and how areas can learn from each other. 59 MHSTs are already established in 25 areas across the country with an additional 123 teams being set up in 57 areas this year, including two teams in Birmingham and Solihull. This will mean that the approach in that area will be able to feed into wider practice.

We have already made available a range of training for education staff on supporting pupils and on joint working. This includes our Link Programme training for all schools and colleges to help frontline health and education professionals work together effectively, and a range of specific training to support an effective response to the issues faced by children and young people as a result of COVID-19. Expert webinars in July reached thousands of education and local service staff.

Feedback suggests that in order to be effective, training and support needs to be flexible and reflect local circumstances. With this in mind, we have worked with DHSC, Health Education England, Public Health England and key voluntary sector organisations, to launch Wellbeing for Education Return. This project, backed by £8 million, is training local experts to provide additional advice and resources for schools and colleges to help support pupil, student, parent and carer, and staff wellbeing, resilience and recovery in light of the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown. The project includes flexibility to allow local authorities?to adapt training, resources and follow-up support to suit their local contexts and will build on existing local approaches to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.