With half of all diagnosable mental health disorders established by the age of 14, there is a clear case for intervening early to support children’s mental health and wellbeing. Schools and colleges play an important role in this.
Last month, the prime minister announced plans to improve mental health for people of all ages, with an emphasis on early intervention for children and young people. Every secondary school in the country is to be offered mental health first aid training, and new trials will explore how links can be strengthened between schools and NHS teams.
Some of these links have already been tested through the mental health services and schools link pilots. The pilots established named single points of contact between schools and NHS Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (NHS CYPMHS) in 22 areas. An evaluation of the pilots published this month identifies critical success factors for effective joint working arrangements between schools and NHS CYPMHS, including:
- clarity and understanding of referral pathways and criteria for specialist support
- a single point of access in NHS CYPMHS for information and advice about mental health issues, with phone and email support
- a thorough scoping of schools’ needs for specialist support, to help determine resource commitment from NHS CYPMHS
- a minimum commitment from schools to identify a suitable lead point of contact with support from the management team and time for training activities
- a commitment in the school development plan to sustain the single point of contact arrangements and develop a mental health and wellbeing policy
- a review of Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) to commission appropriate NHS service support on offer to schools, as well as a forum for collective planning linked to LTPs
As more schools provide mental health support, it will be important that school leaders can measure and monitor the mental health and wellbeing of their students. Public Health England and the Anna Freud Centre have produced a toolkit for schools and colleges which summarises a range of tools for measuring and monitoring mental health and wellbeing in schools. http://www.annafreud.org/services-schools/schools-in-mind/resources-for-schools/mental-health-toolkit-for-schools/.
NHS mental health services that are developing links with local schools will need to monitor which schools the children and young people in their care attend. iaptus CYP – the patient management system designed for CYP mental health services – enables services to:
- add the name of the referring school and ID to the registration info on the patient record, using a national schools list
- generate letters to a named teacher or SENCO at the school
- run reports on patients by school referral source
- include school referral source in data submission to the MHSDS
- run reports on patients’ by school they attend to assist communication with schools
Find out more about how iaptus CYP can support your service by contacting us.
