“Schools can’t deal with mental health issues on their own,” says Department for Education CYPMH lead
Matthew Hopkinson, the Head of Unit, Children and Young People’s Mental Health, Anti-Bullying, PE and School Sport at the Department for Education was speaking at the annual Healthy MindED Conference in Durham on Thursday.
The CYPMH lead, who was the keynote speaker at the event, made the comments when informing the 150 delegates of what the Government had planned to do in the future to help support schools after analysing the outcomes of the CYPMH Green Paper.
He said: “Schools can’t deal with mental health issues on their own. We want serious extra capacity in the system by employing 8,000 more staff, and that is more staff than currently work in CAMHs nationally.
“We want school mental health support to be sustainable and we don’t want it to fall by the wayside 3 or 4 years down the line.”
Mr Hopkinson did acknowledge, however, that it is difficult to link education and mental health services.
He said: “We recognise that we need to improve specialist support to those most in need. The job you might do (for mental health) in a primary school compared to a secondary school might be completely different.
“That said, we want to capitalise on the good work that people are doing and show examples of good practice on this area.”
The Department for Education’s CYPMH lead also told delegates of potential future collaborations with Ofsted to measure child wellbeing as part of the reformed framework.
He said: “We want to help schools measure their impact and get recognition for what they do. Child wellbeing is something that could fit into the Ofsted framework, but maybe this is not enough.
“We really want to know how we can help schools with their child mental health support. I’m very conscious, like you all are, that we need to keep the pressure on with this.”
The Healthy MindED event, held in Durham on Thursday 24th May, was attended by delegates from across the North East with active involvement in children’s mental health. The programme featured sessions from ‘Voice of the Pupil’ the child-led mental health commission established by SCHOOLS NorthEast, Dr Wendy Thorley, Dr Emily Henderson from NHS England and Dr Mina Fazel, as well as sessions on resilience, social media safety, school wellbeing and parental engagement.