Early intervention support in schools: Young Somerset MHST
Mental health
30 November 2022
By Helen
Having recently celebrated their 25 year anniversary, Young Somerset is the largest youth work charity in Somerset. They are commissioned to work in partnership with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust to deliver the Mental Health Support Team (MHST).
At the Open Forum Children and Young People’s mental health conference, we spoke alongside our fantastic guest speakers: Sarah Cox, Service Manager, Mental Health and Wellbeing at Young Somerset, and Kate Gallagher, Clinical Lead for Mental Health in Schools Team at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.
An overview of Somerset MHST’s early intervention support in schools
The Somerset MHST offers mental health and early intervention support for children and young people aged 5-16. The teams are made up of Young Somerset’s Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs), CAMHS Senior Mental Health Practitioners (SMHPs), Whole School Approach Practitioners and Clinical Leads.
This collaborative model ensures support to young people as well as parents, carers and staff in selected schools across Somerset.
The MHSTs deliver three core functions:
- Deliver evidence-based early intervention services for mild-moderate mental health and emotional wellbeing needs
- Support Senior Mental Health Leads in education settings to develop and introduce their whole school approach
- Provide timely advice to staff and liaise with external specialist services. Therefore, children and young people can get the right support at the right time
More than 300 mental health support teams have been established across the country. However, many of the services do things quite differently from one another. Therefore, Kate and Sarah strongly recommended linking up with other mental health support teams. This means you are able to share your learnings with one another.
How Young Somerset uses iaptus CYP to inform and improve their services
Young Somerset use Mayden’s flagship product, iaptus CYP electronic patient record system. Their usage is predominantly for data reporting and recording outcome measures in their MHST work. It’s extremely important to keep case notes and collect data. Simultaneously, it’s also about focusing on making that data useful and meaningful for the young people that they’re engaging with. The system supports practitioners to set goals with young people, enter Routine Outcome Measure (ROMS) in sessions and give immediate feedback on progress.
Crucially, Young Somerset also use iaptus CYP for data collection and reporting, to help track progress throughout their early interventions support in schools as well as reporting nationally to the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS) on activity and outcomes of NHS commissioned support.
Find out how iaptus CYP can support your work with CYP – book a demo with our team.
Finally, if you’d be interested in sharing your experience of working in an MHST as a guest speaker contact Jen at jen.cable@mayden.co.uk