Government urged to make mental health teaching in schools as important as literacy and numeracy
A new report reveals a lack of connection between the education system and the child and adolescent mental health system and calls for a new framework for schools that would put mental health teaching at the top of the agenda.
The Values-Based Child and Adolescent Mental Health System Commission asks that the Government recognise the role of schools as a key component of the mental health service and fund them appropriately in order to:
• Undertake mental health impact assessments to ensure that both schools/education policy and legislation are not detrimental to children and young people’s mental health.
• Help schools to develop a framework for empowering and enabling children and young people to better understand their own mental health and to advocate for themselves. Schools should be able to teach children and young people about mental health in the same way they teach them about numeracy and literacy.
• Ensure that schools are able to identify mental health issues and can easily signpost pupils to relevant support, either within the school or their local community, and have the accountability to do this.
The Commission worked on the basis that tensions between stakeholders arise when there are differences in values and that this can lead to “failures of communication and other barriers to joined-up care provision”.
However, these issues are not irreconcilable but can more usefully be considered as differences of emphasis.
It is possible then to develop a framework of shared values that can allow stakeholders to arrive at balanced solutions in the best interests of children and young people.
Prof. Dame Sue Bailey is part of the Commission’s Steering Committee and was recently announced as the Chair of Healthy MindED, the school-led commission into pupils’ mental health launched by SCHOOLS NorthEast.
Read the whole report: What really matters in children and young people’s mental health