The Department for Education is looking at setting up a national mental health lead hub for senior staff who have undergone the government-funded training, aimed at helping them improve mental health and wellbeing support for staff and students in schools.
The resources hub will make it easier for leads to find “trusted” information and “save time” in developing their school’s “approach to promoting mental health and wellbeing”, the DfE said in an early engagement notice published this week.
It will also aim to reduce “uncertainty” around which resources are most useful in different contexts, and how much they can be trusted based on evidence, the notice said.
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It added that the successful provider “will need to gain the support of, and work in collaboration with, other mental health providers, experts and representative bodies across both sectors” and could be “either one organisation, or a group of organisations working in partnership”.
The next stage of the process would be an informative webinar, hosted by the DfE at an as yet unconfirmed date.
Earlier this month, the department renewed calls for mental health training providers to apply to offer training to senior staff in schools.
The first round of funding for the training was originally set to be made available to schools in September 2019 when the programme was set out in the government’s children and young people’s mental health Green Paper of 2017, but was delayed for two years before finally launching in September 2021.
For the 2022-23 financial year, the DfE said it has allocated a total of £10 million to the scheme - a year-on-year increase of £500,000 from the previous period - after announcing a further £7 million earlier this year.
Last month, it said this would enable up to 8,000 more schools and colleges to apply for one-off training grants worth £1,200 in 2022-23.
According to DfE statistics, only 810 schools have been allocated the sum for their training courses so far this academic year, bringing the total proportion of schools in England that have accessed the funding to 45 per cent.
The government said it wants all schools to have been offered training by 2025.
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Many members have told us that the scheme has been helpful, particularly the flexibility for mental health leads to choose the level of training that is right for them.
“However, in terms of tackling the mental health crisis among children and young people, it is like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg as one in six children has a mental health need and an already worrying situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
She added: “The government must ensure schools are given the resources they need to create a joined-up approach to mental health provision, where teachers can discuss cases, embed ongoing training and develop a shared understanding of what support they are expected to provide.
“The biggest problem is the difficulty young people have in accessing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), where the thresholds are too high and the waiting lists too long. Teachers need to be able to quickly refer pupils to expert external support where appropriate, allowing them to focus on providing high quality education.”
Covid impact on mental health
Last year, research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that leaders across 50 schools in England were seeing a mental health deterioration in children with a history of issues pre-pandemic, but also a rise in problems in children who had no previous history of such ailments.
One respondent said the number of children referred to child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) at their school had increased from one child before the pandemic to 11.
The briefing concluded that the government “needs urgently to review the provision in place to address the surge in Covid-related anxiety and mental health issues among children and young people”.
Meanwhile, mental health and wellbeing among headteachers themselves is currently in decline.
A University College London (UCL) study released this month shows that in January 2021 almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of headteachers in England felt highly anxious about work, compared with 42 per cent of class teachers.
