Prioritising the mental health of children and young people has never been more important. According to NHS data, before the pandemic, around one in eight children and young people experienced mental health difficulties severe enough to warrant specialist support, which has now risen to one in six having a probable mental disorder.
Schools and colleges are in a unique position to be able to support prevention and embed early intervention in children’s mental health, but do not always have the time and resources they need to achieve this in practice.
A report published this month by the Anna Freud Centre, Closing the gap in child and youth mental health support: insights from North West England, considers this problem and looks to examples of good practice already happening in schools and colleges from which we can learn.
So, how can schools move from the aspiration of doing more to improve mental health to actually delivering on it?
1. Appoint a designated lead for mental health
The government’s Green Paper, Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision, recommends that all schools and colleges have a designated senior mental health lead by 2025.
Their responsibilities should be written into their job description, and include developing and embedding a whole-school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing. To ensure senior mental health leads are equipped to succeed, the Department for Education is providing grants for training on its quality assured courses. More details can be found here.
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2. Involve the whole community
To integrate mental health across the whole school community, the policy and practice must represent the views of everyone. There are a number of ways to do this, but establishing a mental health action group that represents staff across the setting and meets at least termly and advises senior management, works really well.
This group should lead on embedding mental health across all areas of the school, including reviewing school policies relating to mental health and wellbeing, reporting on its activity to school leaders and governors, identifying the needs of the whole school, and developing the skills of the group to champion this work.
3. Establish the lines of communication
Create the mechanisms for pupils, parents and carers and staff to share feedback on wellbeing issues. School staff, including leaders, could also operate an open-door policy for parents and carers, so they can easily raise any concerns.
It is important to include student voice, and many schools appoint pupil wellbeing champions across class or year groups, to gather views of young people and to demonstrate the importance the school community places on wellbeing. These pupils also need to feed into the mental health action group.
4. Measure pupil and staff wellbeing
Understanding the mental health needs of your pupils is at the heart of an effective approach. Evaluation enables you to identify where your interventions are making a difference, so you can regularly review and develop next steps and build an evidence base helping to make an effective investment in this area.
The Wellbeing Measurement Toolkit and Framework are validated tools developed by experts and available to schools and colleges for free, enabling you to gather feedback. Free resources on how to prioritise the wellbeing of school leaders, teachers and other school staff - alongside that of pupils - can be found here.
5. Embed mental health literacy
Through evidence-based training, schools and colleges can integrate mental health and wellbeing across the curriculum, creating a common language for staff, pupils, parents and carers. Training should respond to identified needs, drawn from the above strategies, so that it builds on efforts to deliver a whole school or college approach.
The Anna Freud Centre’s CARE principle is a useful free tool for encouraging all staff to be curious and approachable, to refer when necessary, and to show empathy. Training should reach all school staff - from administrative staff to premises managers, and catering staff to headteachers, to spread the message that mental health is everyone’s responsibility.
Jaime Smith is the director of the schools division at the Anna Freud Centre
