The £9.3 million mental health program will launch for every school and college in England. It will help students struggling with mental health to get more care and support in schools plus colleges.
Every school, college and any other provision will be offered training through a series of workshops as part of the Link Programme. The most appropriate staff members will go on these workshops to work with mental health specialists.
The programme is designed to improve the partnership with the NHS mental health services, raise awareness and improve referrals when needed. It is a four year scheme which will be guided by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, supported by the multi-million-pound government investment.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: “School and college should be a place where young people feel valued, supported and listened to – and I know that this is the case for so many thanks to the dedication of their teachers and support staff. But there are limits to what can be asked or expected of teachers – they are not, and should not, be mental health professionals.
“That’s why this new training is important, by bringing school and college staff into the same room as NHS professionals and encouraging them to work together, sharing their expertise and making sure they have the information they need so that more pupils get the right help at the right time.
“This builds on the significant measures we’ve already put in place to improve children’s wellbeing, including our new mandatory health education curriculum and the mental health first aid training being offered to schools and colleges.”
One in nine young people aged 5 to 15 had a diagnosable mental health condition in 2017. Teenages who had mental health problemes were more than twice as likely to have a mental health disorder in adulthood.
The Link Programme will deliver just under 1,000 training sessions across in England which will involve a two day workshop for up to 20 schools at a time.
Director of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme Jaime Smith said: “Teachers are on the frontline, they’re already always looking out for the welfare of their children and young people but we want to make sure they know who they can refer to and how to get that specialist input really quickly.
“We’re all a lot more conscious these days about mental health, it’s very much on people’s minds… we know that by addressing these problems early on, sometimes when it’s a relatively small problem, it’s possible to stop it becoming a larger problem.”
