SCHOOLS NorthEast’s response to Government’s mental health provision green paper
Following consultation with a range of schools, SCHOOLS NorthEast has responded to the Government’s consultation on Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper.
The Green Paper proposes three “core proposals”:
Senior Mental Health Leads
• £95 million in funding will go to training school-based “senior mental health leads”. The Green Paper says that schools will be “incentivised”, not required, to do it and the first money for training is planned to be available from 2019 but it is not envisaged it will be available in all areas until 2025.
• The role will be responsible for developing a “whole-school approach” to mental health and wellbeing. Duties will include pastoral support and ensuring strong policies are in place for dealing with issues including bullying.
Mental Health Support Teams
• £215 million to improve links between schools and local health services, piloting starts in 2019 in selected areas.
• The teams will also work to improve early intervention on mental health, by providing a range of support and treatments in or near schools and colleges.
• Government recruiting “several thousand people” over the next five years to fill the teams.
CAMHS waiting times pilot
• As of 2019, a pilot scheme will be rolled out in England, “to try out different ways of working”In the areas that the scheme is piloted, the Government will seek to reduce the waiting time for mental health support to four weeks, and quicker for young people who need “very urgent help”.
• Currently waiting times vary from 4-100 weeks, with the average being 12 weeks.
SCHOOLS NorthEast’s view
On the Designated Mental Health Leads
● We are concerned that the Government has not sufficiently recognised the ever-expanding burden on school staff. In addition to the new Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health role, schools must appoint a Data Protection Officer to comply with GDPR requirements, a Designated Careers Lead to ensure compliance with the Careers Benchmarks and a Designated Safeguarding Lead, amongst other recent additions. The Impact Assessment states of the Mental Health Leads: “the role is voluntary, the time is to be determined by individual schools and we currently have no evidence of the benefits of other tasks that would not be completed.” It would have been extremely helpful to have conducted such an assessment. There is a sense among school leaders that we are reaching a certain limit on the new responsibilities individual members of staff and schools as a whole can take on in the absence of additional funding. If the Government sees this as an important position it should be remunerated with additional ring-fenced funding from the DfE.
● We are disappointed that funding is to be made available only for the training of Designated Senior Mental Health Leads. Government should ensure that mental health awareness is part of Initial Teacher Training, committing additional funding for this if necessary. The Green Paper makes some comments around this but remains vague and non-committal. SCHOOLS NorthEast sees this as essential to a whole-school approach to promoting wellbeing.
On the Mental Health Support Teams
● Including parents and the wider family in the Support Teams’ interventions would increase their effectiveness. Many of the problems vulnerable children experience originate in the quality and consistency of their parenting. We know that, for example, parenting groups for the parents of children with behavioural difficulties as early as possible do a great deal of good.
● We know that children living in poverty are at greater risk of developing a mental illness but there is little recognition of this in the Green Paper. According to DWP figures, half a million more children fell into absolute poverty from 2010 to 2015, which has driven by stagnant real incomes and exacerbated by welfare policy. Moreover, the IFS paper ‘Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2017’, projects a rise in child poverty of 37% by 2022. The issue of vulnerability cannot be looked at in isolation; there has to be a recognition of the wider context and a political will to address the cause as well as the symptoms of vulnerability.
On the wider policy context
● The context of real terms cuts to school funding must be taken into account. Many schools have already been forced to cut back on mental health services and given that the Mental Health Lead role will be “incentivised” rather than required, provision will rely on schools’ having an individual commitment to the mental health of their pupils. The Impact Assessment mentions that 49% of schools already have a mental health lead, so it is likely that many of those able to introduce such a position have already done so.
On the trailblazer areas
- The Government should not concentrate the trailblazer areas solely in the “Opportunity Areas”. SCHOOLS NorthEast has repeatedly raised concerns that a two-tier system for accessing Government funding seems to be emerging, with the Opportunity Areas at the front of the queue. While the methodology behind Opportunity Areas is more than defensible, the omission of the North East, the region with the highest number of FSM-eligible pupils, exposes a flaw in the implementation
On the timetable for implementation
● The Government’s timetable for implementation is distinctly unambitious- 75-80% of the country will see no change in provision over the next five years. There is a need for schools need to see support and funding far sooner. For example, the November 2015 CAMHS Benchmarking Report showed a 64 per cent increase in CAMHS referrals from 2014-15. If we are to begin reversing the worrying trends in children and young people’s mental health in the North East and elsewhere the Government should update its timetable or at least review it when the National Study of Health and Wellbeing publishes its new prevalence estimates later this year.
SCHOOLS NorthEast is hosting their annual HealthyMindED conference, focusing on children’s mental health in schools, on the 24th May. To find out more and to book your ticket, click here.