Pupils: Mental Health

(asked on 9th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether funding for the Wellbeing in Education Return Programme is planned to continue after March 2021.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 12th March 2021

Our £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return project funded until the end of March has provided support, advice and resources for schools and colleges. Programme estimates suggest that training and support has already reached up to 15,000 schools giving schools across the country information and strategies to help them to respond to the mental wellbeing issues that children and young people are facing. Webinar content covering wellbeing and resilience, bereavement and loss, trauma, anxiety, stress and low mood will remain freely available on the MindEd platform for all education settings to use and adapt to their particular setting: https://www.minded.org.uk/Component/Details/662137.

We are considering how we can build on this to provide further support for children, young people, and staff as they return to education. The department’s Mental Health in Education Action Group has identified 5 areas where we can look to make use of health provision and expertise to support education settings further in the short term, including:

  • clear advice and sources of support for the issues that education staff find the most difficult to deal with
  • good information and materials on specific issues that children and young people are seeking help with to inform pastoral support
  • bringing together sources of online/text/app support and setting out how this can complement school and college pastoral support and face-to-face provision
  • clear advice to schools on how to use catch-up and recovery premium most effectively pastoral support, linking them to evidence-based local and national provision
  • providing wellbeing support for students who are making the transition into secondary school and post-16 education, especially those who have been out of education for a significant time to support them to stay in learning.

The department will bring together specific groups of partners and stakeholders, including education representatives, to take action on each making the best use of existing support in the immediate term and identifying opportunities to strengthen support further. The department will also continue to engage with education stakeholders, including staff and leadership unions, to further understand the issues and put other action in place.

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