Schools: Mental Health Services

(asked on 27th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress he has made on ensuring that every school and college has a designated lead in mental health.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 4th February 2021

It is up to schools and colleges to decide whether to put in place a lead for mental health and more are doing so. Our latest figures from a survey in 2018 reported that over 80% of schools and colleges had a lead (82% of schools, 91% of further education colleges). An earlier survey in 2016 had suggested that around half had a lead (49% of schools, 69% of colleges).

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the government has prioritised providing bespoke training and support to as many schools and colleges as possible to meet the immediate challenges that they face in supporting the wellbeing of children and young people during the COVID-19 outbreak. We provided seminars during the summer term last year which were accessed by thousands of staff in education and have funded the £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return scheme to provide advisers and further training to schools and colleges.

All upper tier local authorities in England have identified a lead contact for Wellbeing for Education Return in September and October 2020 our national training provider, the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, trained 438 local experts. 85% of local authorities report that they are already delivering additional training and support to local schools and further education providers using the funding, with feedback indicating that this training and support is reaching more than 15,000 schools.

In the longer term, to further incentivise schools and to support leads to put in place whole school approaches to promoting good mental health and wellbeing, the department has committed to provide training for senior mental health leads in all state-funded schools and colleges in England. This is part of our commitment to our joint green paper delivery programme with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, which also includes introducing new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support. The training will equip senior mental health leads with the knowledge to introduce or develop their whole school/college approach to positive mental health and implement effective processes for ensuring pupils and students with mental health problems receive appropriate support. Since the autumn term the department has been undertaking a review of the needs of senior mental health leads in the light of COVID-19 outbreak and to incorporate learning from the Wellbeing for Education Return.

Whole school approaches will include the new requirement for schools to teach about mental wellbeing as part of Relationship, Sex and Health Education (RSHE). The department is committed to supporting all schools in their preparations to teach RSHE and has developed an online service featuring innovative training materials and an implementation guide. This support will cover all of the teaching requirements in the statutory guidance and will be inclusive of all pupils. We prioritised the production of the training module covering mental wellbeing, so that it was available before the end of the summer term last year: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-mental-wellbeing. The mental wellbeing module has been downloaded over 21,000 times.

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