Special Educational Needs: Mental Health Services

(asked on 7th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the Mental Health Support Teams model for delivery in SEN schools.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 21st February 2022

As part of the government response to the consultation published in July 2018, a commitment was made to establish new mental health support teams (MHSTs), working in or near schools and colleges. The full consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision-a-green-paper.

The interim report of the independent evaluation into the first 25 MHST trailblazer sites testing out new ways of supporting children and young people with mild to moderate mental health needs in educational providers was published in July 2021. This can be found here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/brace/publications.aspx.

Findings included that 89% of local service models were underpinned by a clear understanding of local needs and had been designed to take all groups of children and young people into account. In some cases the ‘standard’ MHST interventions were felt to be less suitable and effective for some groups including younger age children, children who were self-harming, children with special educational needs, and vulnerable and disadvantaged children. The core functions of the MHST model are to deliver specific interventions for mild to moderate mental health needs, to support education settings including special schools to develop their holistic approach to mental health and wellbeing. It is also to facilitate access to appropriate external specialist services to help children and young people get the right support and stay in education.

The department is clear that local service providers must carefully consider health inequalities and disadvantage when deciding how an MHST is structured. It must also work with each education setting to scope out and co-design the support offer required to ensure it reflects the needs of pupils and students, the setting, and the local system.

MHSTs may, with local partners, develop thematic or specialist teams to work with specific types of settings or needs, and some have now adapted their offer to provide tailored support in special schools. The department will look to build on learning from their approach, as well as findings from the independent evaluation, to support understanding of how best to meet the needs of settings and children and young people in special schools.

Reticulating Splines