Pupils: Mental Health Services

(asked on 14th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department is taking steps to provide counselling for students in schools.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 21st January 2019

School based counselling by well-qualified practitioners can play an effective role as part of a ‘whole school’ approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing. The Department’s England-wide representative survey of school provision, published in 2017, indicated that 61% of schools offer counselling services, with 84% of secondary schools providing their pupils with access to counselling support. To support more schools to do so, the Government has provided advice on how to deliver high quality school-based counselling, available to view here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/counselling-in-schools.

NHS England will fund new mental health support teams, working in schools and colleges, which will be rolled out to between one fifth and a quarter of England by the end of 2023. This will start with 25 trailblazer areas which will be fully operational by the end of 2019. Next steps for this roll out are being considered as part of the NHS long term plan, published on 7 January, and will be informed by the evaluation of the initial trailblazers. These new teams should work closely with services which are already being provided in local areas, including other professionals who work closely with schools and colleges, such as school counsellors.

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