The importance of early intervention and supporting children and young people (CYP) in schools has been coming up the agenda over the last 10 years.
The “Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision: a Green Paper”, was published in 2017. Within this, there was a vision for CYP to have better mental health and wellbeing support. In particular, support that is promoted in schools and colleges by parents, carers and health and care providers.
To support this, the NHS long term plan committed to establishing Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in 20-25% of the country by 2023.
Initially, 58 MHSTs were established in 25 Trailblazer areas around the country. There are now over 400 teams working in schools and colleges, aiming to reach 500 MHSTs by April 2024. These schools are attended by almost three million young people; although, still a small proportion of our national CYP population.
CYP mental health: the path to recovery
Mayden sponsored Open Forum’s CYP Mental Health: The Path to Recovery conference in Manchester. This explored how service providers can be better equipped to provide necessary support to such a high number of CYP.
Our digital care record software, iaptus CYP, was developed to help CYP mental health services manage the psychological therapy support they offer and improve outcomes for patients. We work hard to ensure our system is flexible, configurable to different care pathways and evidences impact of MHSTs.
We also make sure that services can collect data in line with what NHS England is collecting nationally. Additionally, we help them to improve what they do and really understand the challenges they are facing.This includes reporting to the MHSDS dataset.
Dr. Jo Ellins, Senior Fellow at the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham, presented the key findings from NIHR BRACE’s evaluation of “Early Experiences of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in Schools and Colleges“.
NIHR BRACE’s evaluation of “Early Experiences of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in Schools and Colleges”
Led by Dr. Jo Ellins, NIHR BRACE’s evaluation of MHSTs draws out key findings and lessons for future programme implementation and expansion.
The evaluation was carried out by two units funded by the National Institute of Health and Care research. These were the BRACE Rapid Evaluation Centre and the Policy Innovation and Evaluation Research Unit. Furthermore, elements of this study have been co-produced and led by young people with lived experience of mental health issues.
The report found that:
- Good progress has been made in implementing MHSTs, despite challenging circumstances.
- MHSTs spent more time providing direct support (on average 52% of their time) than on their other two functions (24% on whole school support and 23% on giving advice and liaising with external services).
- Recruiting to the Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) role and training programme had gone well. However, Trailblazers consistently reported problems retaining EMHPs once in post.
- Education settings reported positive effects from participating in the programme. This included staff feeling more confident talking to children and young people about mental health and wellbeing issues.
- 70% of Senior mental health leads in schools and colleges said that the MHST is becoming an established and connected part of their setting.
View a summary of the findings of the trailblazer programme.
Finally, iaptus CYP can support your MHST service. Book a demo with a member of our team to find out how. For more MHST resources, visit our Mayden Hub.