Building support network for children’s mental health
RECENT RESEARCH has highlighted worrying gaps in provision for children facing mental health issues – but a new initiative is hoping to improve the situation in classrooms across the country.
A report by the Children’s Commissioner last year highlighted serious concerns around the availability of mental health services for children in England, with it finding more than one quarter of young people referred for support were turned away.
Most alarmingly, 14 per cent of children with life-threatening mental health conditions were denied specialist support. These included children who had attempted suicide or serious self-harm and those with psychosis and anorexia nervosa.
Theresa May announced plans in January to “transform” attitudes to mental health, with every secondary school offered ‘mental health first aid training’ to identify symptoms in pupils and offer support. Three-quarters of mental health problems start by the age of 18, highlighting the importance of adequate support being available from a young age.
Now the UK’s first national Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools has been established in Yorkshire, based at Leeds Beckett University.
The Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools has been created to strengthen the mental health of the next generation by supporting schools in making positive changes at all levels of the UK’s education system, improving outcomes and life chances of children across the country.
Professor Damien Page, Dean of the Carnegie School of Education at Leeds Beckett, says: “Through the centre, we are creating a network of practitioners – educators, mental health service providers and researchers – to define and share best practice and to support schools across the UK to implement this.
“As one of the country’s best performing providers of teacher education, we’re committed to working with schools to improve outcomes for children.
“But focusing on improving classroom practice is not enough; we need to address the mental health of children first and train our students to look after children in the widest sense.
“The new centre will give them the best possible grounding whilst boosting the skills of existing teachers and showing senior leaders how to take on a whole school approach to tackling mental health.”
The initiative is led by the Carnegie School of Education in partnership with social enterprise, Minds Ahead. Dean Johnstone, chief executive of Minds Ahead, said: “Leeds Beckett is the first UK university to be establishing a centre for mental health in schools.
“There is one in the US and one in Canada, so it was only right that school colleagues and children in the UK deserve such a resource too. Minds Ahead is committed to finding innovative solutions so that mental health difficulties don’t limit success at school and beyond. Starting this Centre with Leeds Beckett University is a key part of this plan.”
Professor Page added: “This centre will lead the way in addressing what has rightly been described as a ‘social injustice’. With the mental health expertise of Minds Ahead and the educational expertise of Leeds Beckett, we’ll make a real impact in improving the life chances of children in our schools.”
An annual conference will be held at the centre, the first of which will be on Monday, June 26, where the centre will be officially launched.
The centre will offer schools the chance to apply for a School Mental Health Quality Mark. An accreditation process has been devised against which schools can be evaluated and assessed as part of the process.