Pupils: Mental Health Services

(asked on 12th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to support students who are suffering from poor mental health as a result of covid-19 lockdown restrictions.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 20th April 2021

The support schools provide to their pupils as they return to face-to-face education should include time devoted to supporting mental health and wellbeing, which will play a fundamental part in supporting children and young people’s recovery. The return to education settings is being supported by a £700 million package, which includes a new one-off Recovery Premium for state primary, secondary and special schools to use as they see best to support disadvantaged students. This will help schools to provide their disadvantaged pupils with a one-off boost to the support, both academic and pastoral, that has been proved most effective in helping them recover from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and can be used for mental health and wellbeing support.

This funding follows our £1 billion COVID “catch-up” package which includes £650 million shared across early years, schools and 16-19 providers over the 2020/21 academic year to support education settings to put the right support in place. This is already being used by schools to put in place additional mental health and wellbeing support.

In addition to this, the department worked with our partners including, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Health Education England and Public Health England to deliver the £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return project, which helped education staff to support the wellbeing and resilience of pupils, students, staff, parents and carers, responding to the immediate pressures of the COVID-19 outbreak. Over 90% of local authority areas have told us how they are delivering additional training and support as a result of Wellbeing for Education Return resources and funding.

We have also recently announced a £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, including through Mental Health Support Teams. The support teams – which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges – will grow from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children. This increase means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services.

The department has convened its Mental Health in Education Action Group, to look at the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health and wellbeing of children, young people and staff in nurseries, schools, colleges, and universities. It is bringing together partners to take additional action to support mental wellbeing of children and young people with the return to education settings and with transitions between education settings in September 2021. This will include looking at what more we can do to help schools to make the most effective use of recovery premium to support mental health and wellbeing.

On 4 February, my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, appointed Dr Alex George as Youth Mental Health Ambassador to advise the government and raise the profile of mental health education and wellbeing in schools, colleges and universities. As Youth Mental Health Ambassador, he will use his clinical expertise as an A&E doctor, as well as personal experience, to champion the government’s work on children’s and young people’s mental health.

We also remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme with DHSC and NHS England, including introducing new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges, providing training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges, and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support.

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