Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 16 November (HL Deb, col 1417) concerning the pilot project being undertaken by the Department of Health and the Department for Education on a single point of contact in schools for mental health issues, what is the scope, size and cost of the scheme.

Good mental health and wellbeing is a key priority for this Department. We have high aspirations for all children and want them to be able to fulfil their potential both academically and in terms of their mental wellbeing.

NHS England and the Department for Education provided £3million to the joint training pilot to train single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services in 22 pilot areas, across 27 Clinical Commissioning Groups, and 255 schools. The scope of the pilot was to test improvements in joint working between school settings and specialist mental health services to develop and maintain effective local referral routes to specialist services to ensure that children and young people have timely access to specialist support where required; improvements in local knowledge and identification of mental health issues; and to test the concept of a lead contact in schools and specialist mental health services and how different areas chose to put it onto practice.

The pilot commenced in November 2015 in: Bedfordshire, Birmingham, Brighton and Hove, Camden, Chiltern, East and North Hertfordshire, East Riding of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Halton, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Salford, Sheffield, Somerset, South Cheshire, Sunderland, Tameside and Glossop, Tower Hamlets, Walsall, Waltham Forest, West Hampshire and Wigan. It is being independently evaluated. The evaluation findings should be available in spring 2017 and will provide an assessment of the effectiveness of its design and implementation, including success factors for engaging schools and other key stakeholders, and challenges and lessons learned from setting up the pilot, its sustainability and potential for wider rollout. The evaluation will also look at the extent to which the pilot resulted in improvements, including in joint working practices between, and the timeliness and appropriateness of referrals from, schools to specialist mental health services; as well as any wider cultural and systems improvements.

We have already shared some of the emerging practice from the pilot through national events, to inform local planning. We will use the formal evaluation findings to determine whether there is value in further roll out of specific training or models of single point of contact, and whether further testing is required of any aspects.