Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 2 November 2021 to Question 58363, Schools: Mental Health Services, if he will provide additional Government funding to enable every place of education to (a) fulfill the Government's expectation in guidance that all schools should make counselling services available to their pupils and (b) ensure that every child in full-time education has access through their place of education to an appropriately-qualified and professionally registered counsellor with experience of working with young people.

The government is taking action to help schools in a number of ways to build their capability to promote children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, as well as making sure those who need help with their mental health receive appropriate support. In May, we announced more than £17 million to build on existing mental health support available in education settings, including £7 million for Wellbeing for Education Recovery and £9.5 million to funding training for senior mental health leads in around a third of all state schools and colleges this financial year, as part of plans to offer training to all schools and colleges by 2025.

This is on top of the £79 million to boost mental health support for children and young people announced in March. This includes increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams working with schools and colleges – from 59 to 400 by April 2023 – supporting nearly 3 million children, as well as expanding community mental health services. 22,500 more children and young people will have access to such services next year, and an additional 345,000 by 2024. This also includes expanding access to eating disorder services, helping 2,000 more children, and continuing to provide 24/7 crisis lines for young people facing a mental health crisis, with additional funding for follow up treatments at home if necessary.

In addition to this, we are investing up to £5 billion to support recovery for children and young people who need it most. This includes an additional £1 billion of new recovery premium funding for disadvantaged pupils – and our guidance is clear that schools can use this funding, as well as other funding such as pupil premium, to support their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing - including for counselling or other therapeutic services, alongside supporting their academic attainment.