Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Department of Education's press release, Schools and colleges to benefit from boost in expert mental health support, published on 10 May 2021, what plans his Department has to provide mental health and wellbeing support to schools that will not be covered by one of the new mental health support teams referenced in that press release.

Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing is a priority for the department, and with the Department for Health and Social Care and wider health partners we our delivering our long-term commitments made in the ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’. This includes introducing new Mental Health Support Teams linked to schools and colleges, incentivising all schools and colleges to identify and train a senior mental health lead, piloting a four week waiting time for access to specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services, and offering the Link Programme to help improve joint working locally between education settings and mental health service providers.

An additional £79 million NHS England funding was confirmed on 5 March 2021 for children and young people’s mental health support, which will include increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams. The number of support teams will grow from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children. This increase, on top of the investment in mental health services set out in the NHS 10-year plan, means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services.

Alongside this, we confirmed on 10 May 2021 that up to 7,800 schools and colleges in England will be offered funding worth £9.5 million to train a senior mental health lead from their staff in the next academic year, which is part of the Government’s commitment to offering this training to all state schools and colleges by 2025. Training will provide senior leads with the knowledge and skills to develop or introduce a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing in their setting, which encourages staff to develop their own understanding of issues affecting their pupils, giving young people a voice in how their school or college addresses wellbeing and working with parents and monitoring pupils where appropriate. Information on this is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/958151/Promoting_children_and_young_people_s_emotional_health_and_wellbeing_a_whole_school_and_college_approach.pdf.

We will also fund an adapted ‘Link' programme which is designed to improve partnerships between health and education leaders in local areas, raise awareness of mental health concerns and improve referrals to specialist help when needed.

The support schools are providing to their pupils following the return to face-to-face education should include time devoted to supporting mental health and wellbeing, which will play a fundamental part in supporting 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.

We have supported schools to put the right pastoral support in place through the Wellbeing for Education Return scheme in 2020/21 academic year, which provided free expert training, support and resources for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing additional pressures from the last year – including trauma, anxiety or grief.

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, as well as considering what additional support is required. The action group highlighted that schools and colleges need help to understand, navigate and access the range of provision available locally, so as a first step we are also providing an additional £7 million funding to local authorities to provide further expert support to do this through the Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme.