2017 General Election: main Parties pledge more mental health support in schools
The Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Conservative Party all promise to help schools improve the mental health support they offer to pupils.
All three manifestos published this week include proposals and plans for better mental health provision to help tackle the growing issue.
The Liberal Democrats pledge to:
- Ensure that all teaching staff have the training to identify mental health issues and that schools provide immediate access for pupil support and counselling.
- Include promoting wellbeing as a statutory duty of a school, to be part of the Ofsted inspection framework.
- Tackle bullying in schools, including bullying on the basis of gender, sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression.
The Labour Party pledges to:
- Extend schools-based counselling to all schools to improve children’s mental health, at a cost of £90 million per year.
The Conservative Party pledges to:
- Introduce mental health first aid training for teachers in every primary and secondary school by the end of the parliament.
- Ensure that every school has a single point of contact with mental health services.
- Include mental wellbeing and the mental health risks of internet harms in the curriculum.
SCHOOLS NorthEast welcomes the Parties’ focus on improving the mental health support available for children and young people in schools across the country. This has been a major concern for Head Teachers in the North East, which resulted in the launch of Healthy MindED – SCHOOLS NorthEast’s schools-led commission into pupils’ mental health.
Find out more about how to improve pupils’ wellbeing and mental health in your school – book your place today for our full-day Healthy MindED Conference.
Taking place on Thursday 8th of June, the event will hear from leading experts as well as schools and health services sharing examples of best practice. Visit the event website for more information.