The aim

MHST aims to help families by expanding capacity for early intervention while also supporting schools and colleges with ongoing assistance. They plan to provide interventions for those with mild to moderate needs and promote good mental health and wellbeing alongside education. Their approach will extend beyond one-on-one work with families to include the development of self-help resources and access to reliable, up-to-date information on mental health.

Additionally, they hope to support schools and colleges in building a collective understanding of local services, enabling them to signpost families and connect them with specialised help effectively.

Whole-school approaches

MHST is a new service and the evidence base on how to deliver the various elements of the whole school approach is still developing. However, they hope that by working closely with schools they can identify issues and problem solve these together through strategies such as:

• Identifying and responding to need
• Consultations
• Teacher training
• Teaching about mental health
• Work to improve engagement of parents, carers and pupils

In short, the Mental Health Support Team:

• Offer interventions that have been shown to help support children and young people overcome difficulties with their mental health and wellbeing.
• Can help children and young people work through struggles with low mood, anxiety and worry.
• Can offer training/workshops based on the needs of the school.
• Support a range of school staff to reflect on their work with young people.
• Offer consultations to ensure that the mental health needs within the school are identified and bespoke interventions offered.
• Help people understand why a behaviour might be happening.
• Work with school staff on how they can support families.
• Support to promote better mental health for everyone as part of the whole-school approach.

Schools should contact MHST ([email protected]) for consultation and support for MHST referral where appropriate.