Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab) I beg to move,
That this House has considered the provision of school-based
counselling services. Let me start by saying how grateful I am to
the Backbench Business Committee for affording me almost half a day
for this topic. I thank my friends throughout the House for making
the case to the Committee, and I particularly thank my friend the
right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who has joined me in
sponsoring...Request free trial
(Newcastle upon Tyne East)
(Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the provision of school-based
counselling services.
Let me start by saying how grateful I am to the Backbench
Business Committee for affording me almost half a day for this
topic. I thank my friends throughout the House for making the
case to the Committee, and I particularly thank my friend the
right hon. Member for Harlow (), who has joined me in
sponsoring the neutral proposition on which the debate is
based.
It is estimated that in England, one in eight young people—13% of
those aged between five and 19—are living with diagnosable mental
health disorders. They include depression, anxiety, and conduct
disorder, which is a type of behavioural problem. While the
announcement earlier this year of extra funding for young
people’s mental health services is welcome, it is targeted
specifically at the extra dimensions of the problem caused by
covid within schools. The problem was there before. It has grown,
and it needs to be addressed. The services were under pressure
before the pandemic, and they remain so now.
The Children’s Society tells us that 75% of young people are not
receiving the help that they need, and 34% of those who manage to
be referred to NHS services are not accepted for treatment.
Public Health England says that in the north-east the number of
pupils with social, emotional and mental health needs is higher
than the national average, and the same is true in respect of
hospital admissions resulting from 10 to 24-year-olds
self-harming. This is an issue for the country, but it is a
particular issue for our region.
(Newcastle upon Tyne
North) (Lab)
I apologise for interrupting an excellent and very timely speech,
and congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. I
do not know whether he has seen the data, but does he share my
concern that there seems to have been a much steeper increase in
the mental health challenges faced by girls throughout their
secondary school years than has been the case among boys? By the
time they leave secondary school, girls have had almost twice as
many contacts with mental health services as boys. Many of those
challenges could potentially have been avoided if there were
proper counselling in schools, for which I am sure my right hon.
Friend will be making the case. Moreover, if boys are more
reluctant to come forward for that help, is that not also a
problem demonstrated by the data?
Mr Brown
Whatever the cause, the problem is clear enough, and it needs to
be addressed. My hon. Friend is right to make the point, and she
is also right to suggest that the roots of this, particularly in
our region and the city that we both represent, are to be found
in deprivation and in poverty. That is a particular feature of
our region, and my hon. Friend spoke about it very movingly in
the earlier debate. We know that mental health issues have a
disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable children, and the
roots of that are in social deprivation. It is a particular
problem in my own constituency. In 2014, 27% of children in east
Newcastle lived in poverty; the latest figure, for 2019-20, is
38%, and it is increasing year on year.
The north-east of England is bearing the brunt of the increase in
child poverty, with all 12 local authorities within the
north-east region in the top 20 authorities that have seen the
highest increase across England as a whole. The last Labour
Government boosted the life chances and welfare of children, and
I am proud to being a part of that. Policies such as Sure Start,
working tax credits and well-funded family-friendly public
services ensured that every child had a positive start in life.
How far we have slid from that, and how misguided and mistaken we
were to get ourselves into that position.
I particularly want to make the case for services for the
disabled, whether they have a physical disability or mental
health problems. I recently met representatives of the National
Deaf Children’s Society who told me about the disproportionate
impact that the coronavirus lockdowns have had on the mental
health of deaf children. Measures taken to fight covid, such as
the widespread wearing of face masks, particularly in the
classroom, have led to communication difficulties for deaf
children. As a result, 60% of deaf children have indicated that
their mental health has worsened, and 58% have reported feeling
isolated and lonely. Many felt that services relied too much on
the telephone for booking appointments, and others did not like
the fact that some appointments were now available only on the
telephone.
I also want to say something about the special needs and
significant mental health problems that child refugees face when
they enter the United Kingdom and, eventually, the school system.
I have received a substantial amount of casework regarding the
situation in Afghanistan, including many requests for help to
leave that country. I do my best to help my constituents, and I
know that other MPs are in the same position. On the point about
ring-fenced funding for mental health support in schools, I have
written to the Home Secretary on behalf of my constituents and I
look forward to receiving a response. It is a specific problem
and it requires a specific response.
Existing provision of schools-based counselling is patchy. There
is currently no legal requirement on schools in England to
provide counselling services. There is, however, a specific
requirement for such provision in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland. I understand that the Department for Education does not
routinely collect school workforce data that would allow us to
identify how many schools directly employed their own
counsellors. Some employ their own, and some link up with other
schools and share a counsellor. We know that provision is varied.
Some have more casual arrangements with the voluntary sector or
local authority partners. Some simply do not offer any
school-based provision, and instead refer children to an external
service.
There is a demand to make schools-based counselling services more
consistent. More than two thirds of young people would prefer to
be able to access mental health support without going through
their GP. The Government’s roll-out of mental health support
teams goes some way towards meeting the lower-level mental health
support needs of children by offering group work and cognitive
behavioural therapy for emerging issues. However, by 2023, the
new teams will reach only about 30% of schools and colleges,
leaving a worrying 70% with no additional early help or support
other than funds that may be accessed directly via the education
recovery plan.
(Strangford) (DUP)
There are many charities, particularly children’s charities,
across the United Kingdom that I can think of, such as the
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,
Barnardo’s and Mind, that have a great grasp and knowledge of
where the real priorities need to be. Does the right hon.
Gentleman feel that when the Government reply, they should listen
to the organisations that know, and then deliver a strategy that
can help with these situations?
Mr Brown
I have a relatively open mind on the particular route that should
be taken to meet these issues head-on, and I have no ideological
objection to a role for the voluntary sector or for those who
want to contribute, but—at least in England—the state must take a
lead. Things cannot be left as they are. I believe that
school-based counselling, regardless of which organisation
provides it, could fill the gap between those mental health
support teams in schools and the national health service’s child
and adolescent mental health services. There are limits to
voluntarism, of course, and we would need the people delivering
the service in the schools to have some form of qualification and
understanding of what they are doing.
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy makes
that point and is campaigning on these issues. Schools-based
counselling is a proven intervention for children and young
people experiencing psychological distress. Some 50% of mental
health disorders are present by the age of 14, increasing to 75%
by the age of 18, so early intervention is key, as it is with
many of these issues.
(North Durham) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend has just mentioned the statistics about
early intervention. In the previous debate we were talking about
investment in children at a young age. Does he agree that
targeted investment in these young people is not just good for
those individuals but makes economic common sense, in that the
payback will be that we have productive and stable members of
society?
Mr Brown
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It also relieves
pressure on the national health service in the longer term,
because the NHS tends to end up as the service of last resort—a
role it shares with the police, equally unfairly in my view.
I commend the efforts of the Tyne & Wear Citizens group,
which has been working to raise the profile of schools-based
counselling and with which I have had regular meetings. The group
has set out three core principles that a successful schools-based
counselling programme ought to follow: first, that services
should be co-operative and inclusive, including the use of
digital wellbeing tools, telephone counselling and face-to-face
sessions at school or external venues; secondly, that services
should be collaborative and liaise with external agencies such as
social services and the police where it is appropriate to do so
and, thirdly, that services should be consistent, provided by
those trained on a nationally recognised course, registered with
a professional body and experienced in working with school-age
children.
In concluding my contribution to this debate, I want to say
something about the schools-based counselling programme in place
in the Newcastle East NEAT Academy Trust in my constituency. I
have nothing but praise for the project itself and the
enthusiastic support that it is receiving from the broader
schools community; my right hon. Friend will remember it well,
because he used to be a councillor for the local government ward
that it serves.
The project has found clear signs of improvement in educational
attainment for around one in three of the pupils who received
counselling. There was a significant improvement in pupils’
achieving their personal goals, with an 85% improvement in
reported progress towards achieving these goals. No child
reported a sharp deterioration in progress.
The counsellor—not a local government-type councillor but a
schools-based counsellor—in the trial that is taking place has
told me that embedding the counselling service as part of the
whole-school approach is vital to removing the stigma around
mental health and promoting a culture shift in the community. She
has reported high levels of engagement in the programme and has
stressed that demand is increasing. In order to reach more
children and young people in crisis and to prevent future mental
health issues from developing, I am convinced that the project
has made a strong case for more school-based counsellors
delivering interventions.
Were the Government to continue to take an interest in this way,
it should be possible to achieve something more. I give them
credit for tentatively seeing the need to intervene in this area
and I hope that today’s debate, across the Floor of the House,
reinforces their appetite for further action.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I am introducing a seven-minute time limit. I call .
17:15:00
(Chatham and Aylesford)
(Con)
It is an honour to be able to speak in this debate, and I
congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East
(Mr Brown) on securing it and the Backbench Business Committee on
granting the House time to discuss such an important matter.
I want to start with an admission. When I first became an MP, I
did not think that schools should be involved in matters that
were beyond the core curriculum, such as mental health. My mind
was changed pretty swiftly in two ways. First, my own brush with
anxiety and depression in 2012 enlightened me about mental health
and cast aside any unconscious prejudice I may have had about who
is affected by poor mental wellbeing. The second came through the
privilege that we, as Members, have of visiting schools in our
constituency and seeing that education is holistic, child-centred
and rarely textbook—I ask the House to forgive the pun.
Having had my lightbulb moment, I now feel a responsibility to
stand up in this Chamber to advocate for better mental health
services for our children. Our child and adolescent mental health
services are, I am afraid, overwhelmed, and we could, and perhaps
should, have another three-hour debate about that. However, while
that remains the case, the system of support for our children
needs to be widened, and that is where our schools come in.
Reading the briefings for this debate, I was struck by the
statistics of deteriorating mental wellbeing among our children,
especially following covid, but the stat that made me feel sick
was in the brief provided by YoungMinds, which noted:
“In 2017, suicide was the most common cause of death for both
boys and girls aged between 5 and 19”.
That made me want to cry. There are so many heartbreaking stories
of children whose lives have been robbed by a disease of which
they had no control, but suicide should be preventable, if we
have the right awareness, training and essential support services
in place. No one, but especially no child, should lose their life
to suicide.
Prior to this debate, I sought some thoughts from a handful of
schools in my constituency, both primary and secondary, just as a
snapshot reflection of need and provision. Anything I say from
here onwards is not a criticism of the services that they, as
schools, provide—quite the opposite. They are doing their
absolute best, despite all the challenges that they face, which I
hope to outline in what is left of my speech. It is clear that
schools can play a vital role in supporting pupils’ mental
health, given that they provide routine and structure to those in
their daily care. However, as the need increases, it is clear
that the existing provision, which in itself varies, is
inadequate in meeting the need from not just a quantitative
perspective, but a quality one.
Access to school counsellors may well be an integral part of
ensuring that young people have access to support, but only if a
school can afford to purchase the school counsellor. Most of my
local secondary schools are in some form of academy trust and
therefore they are able to pool resources and provide a school
counselling service. One trust told me that, despite having a
counsellor who works at one secondary each morning and one
primary in the afternoon, and another secondary that buys in
external support for three days a week, it is nowhere near
enough. Another trust told me that it is lucky to have built up a
specialist team of experienced professionals to plug the gap when
other agencies are not on board. They have a qualified counsellor
and a full-time safeguarding lead, but still their young people
are crying out for help and, with the greatest respect to those
working their socks off in schools, what they absolutely do not
need is to be told there is a two-year wait to see CAMHS when a
pupil is self-harming or has suicidal thoughts.
It is useful to be able to provide that support where the
resources can be pooled to do it, but for a small school with a
published admission number of 180, like one of the primary
schools I reached out to, the funding is simply not available. If
anyone thinks that there is not an acute need in primary schools
for wellbeing support services, they are fools. I have heard as
many stories of self-harm, suicidal thoughts and depression in
our younger age groups as I have in secondary. But if they cannot
afford a counsellor or a family liaison officer, they are left to
rely on a mental health lead, which is basically a teacher still
doing their job and all the things required on a curriculum, but
having completed an online learning course. That course qualifies
them to deal with mental health conditions as much as my FA level
1 coaching badge qualifies me to manage England.
I applaud the Government focus on this issue in guidance and, of
course, the increase in funding for mental health services, but
the sad truth is that more is needed. First, we need ringfenced
funding. One head said to me that
“if you put additional funding into our budgets it would get lost
so whilst I hate this process, look at a ring fenced amount for
the next 5 years to allow us to specifically fund mental health
provision in schools”.
Secondly, as suggested by one of my local schools, the training
of mental health first aid should be mandatory in schools. They
legally have to provide physical first aiders; why is it not the
same with mental health? The training needs to be funded and not
just the preserve of schools that can pay £300 per person and
release staff for two days of training.
Thirdly, the Government need to fund the provision of curriculum
resources to adequately teach mental health and wellbeing skills.
As a strong advocate of the benefit of mindfulness in schools, I
believe that the welcome but patchy initiatives that help to
support wellbeing while building resilience should become
standard, funded practice. It does not have to be mindfulness—one
of my schools has a pat-a-dog, which has had a remarkable impact
on student wellbeing—but aligning mental health and wellbeing to
the curriculum, as we do with physical education, would be
enormously positive.
We need to reflect on the role of designated mental health lead.
I am afraid my local schools think that although it was designed
with good intentions, it will end up like the role of designated
safeguarding lead, which is done by a teacher, usually someone on
the senior leadership team who, by the nature of their position,
already has significant responsibility.
Finally, it is clear that schools are really good places to host
hubs for wellbeing, so why not capitalize on that view and ensure
that each cluster of schools has access to a mental health
worker, a social worker, a school nurse and even a police
community support officer, to deliver resource right into the
heart of the community, for the most vulnerable within it?
(Twickenham) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I agree with
pretty much everything she is saying. On hubs, does she agree
that some children and young people will not feel comfortable and
will not want to access services through their school, for a
variety of reasons? Community-based mental health support hubs
that are a one-stop-shop for a variety of services are an
essential complement to school-based counselling services.
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. We need to reduce
the stigma around mental health and give people the confidence to
access support services wherever they are, whether that is in a
school or a community hub.
It is clear that we stand on the edge of a young people’s mental
health crisis, and more so because of covid, but it could also be
that because of covid we have the chance to make fundamental
change rather than minor tweaks here or there. I have a great
deal of respect for the Minister and know that he will hear what
colleagues say this afternoon. I hope he will go back to the
Department, gather together all the relevant stakeholders to
urgently review provision in the light of the increasing need,
and then propose radical reform to support better in-house
provision, because it takes less than a few minutes of listening
to teachers in our constituencies to understand how urgently that
is needed.
17:23:00
(Washington and Sunderland
West) (Lab)
I am happy to speak in this debate on school-based counselling
services and thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle
upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for securing this important debate.
A silent epidemic is sweeping through our schools and through
some of our young people. It is a wide-reaching and
indiscriminate epidemic, yet we are so often unwilling to discuss
it. I am, of course, talking about the mental health crisis in
young people. A recent NHS report published in 2021 found that
the number of young people with probable mental health disorders
had been rising steadily since 2017. Currently, an estimated one
in six young people between the ages of six and 19 have a
probable mental health disorder. The pandemic was hard for us
all, but it could be said that it was felt hardest by our young
people, who were cut off from school, part-time jobs and their
friends. Worse still, the pandemic and chronic underfunding of
our NHS caused one of the largest backlogs of mental health
patients that this country has ever seen. The situation is dire
and changes are long overdue.
As children return to school, we must use this opportunity to
build a more welcoming and available system for young people with
mental health problems. While mental health problems can afflict
anyone from all walks of life, for those children whose homes
have unstable economic or familial dynamics, and when those
disorders are also compounded by fear and stigma, schools are
often the only outlet, the only safe place. Schools must be part
of the solution.
I am sure that all of us here know someone who has suffered from
mental health issues. Tragically, some may also end up taking
their own lives as a result. It is in times such as these that we
are often forced to ask ourselves: what if we had known sooner;
what if they had got the support they needed. That is the essence
of what I am putting forward today? What if we tackle mental
health complications early? No child should be left to begin
their life with baggage—a weight to bear for the rest of their
lives. Schools provide us with unparalleled access into the minds
of still developing young people and it is here that we can
really make a difference.
The current system to tackle young mental health concerns is
outdated. A 2014 report by the Health Committee found that the
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services has a complex funding
arrangement and a tier-based model that fails to truly integrate
the range of organisations tasked with safeguarding young people.
We must show that we have listened to those families who have
struggled to access mental health support during the pandemic,
when pressures on children and families were at an all-time
high.
While I welcome the Government’s plan to expand mental health
provisions in schools, progress is painfully slow. I also fear
that their current solution of increasing mental health support
teams creates a “missing middle” of children who would not
qualify for CAMHS, but whose needs are too complex for MHSTs. Yet
again, the Government have put forward a plan that is unambitious
and riddled with holes. We need a system that is more
straightforward and co-operative and that supports all needs.
Employing counsellors in every school could be a viable solution
to this, and it is an extremely popular measure among the public,
especially those with children under the age of 18. Only around
61% of schools and colleges in England offer counselling
services, more often than not run by under-qualified counsellors.
That is not good enough. Concerns about the number of trained
counsellors in schools and whether they are mandatory should be
addressed by the Government.
Citizens UK has estimated that hiring the required 13,394 fully
trained, school-based British Association for Counselling and
Psychotherapy accredited counsellors would cost only £554 million
a year. That compares with the £1.4 billion per year currently
spent on CAMHS. School counsellors in every school would
centralise services, reaching the “missing middle” as well as
help the 65% of pupils not currently supported under the MHST
model.
I am by no means suggesting that we should spend less on mental
health services, but the current unsubstantiated spending does
nothing to improve services. We need focused care that identifies
the problem, communicates with students in the most appropriate
way and co-operates with all local institutions.
For far too long, mental health services have been shunted to the
back of the queue and not taken seriously. I was shocked to
discover that, when questioned in July, the former Health
Minister, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms
Dorries), revealed that counselling services for schools were not
yet mandatory and she did not indicate any plan to make mental
health services mandatory. Instead, she indicated that schools
should be given the “freedom to decide”. The mental health of our
children is not a subject for party dogma over freedom. Would any
responsible parent send their child to school without someone who
is, at the very least, first aid trained with a first aid kit to
hand. If their child then fell over in the playground or had an
allergic reaction, they would hope that someone would be there to
help them, so why should mental health be any different?
What I, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne
East, and I think all of us in the Chamber are advocating is
this: a safe environment for young people where mental health is
no longer the unknown or unaccounted for. If we are ever to
achieve genuine parity of esteem, that is the very least we
should be doing.
17:30:00
(Harlow) (Con)
It was an honour to present before the Backbench Business
Committee with my friend, the right hon. Member for Newcastle
upon Tyne East (Mr Brown).
The repercussions of the pandemic will have a significant impact
on children and young people. As the mental health charity, Mind,
has pointed out, covid-19 will leave a “deep and lasting scar” on
the mental health of millions. The statistics are grim; some have
already been cited. In March, my Committee heard from the Royal
College of Psychiatrists that there had been a “massive” rise in
children self-harming, with a 7% rise among girls aged 11 to 16
since 2017. In 2019-20, the number of children being referred for
mental health treatment soared by 60%. We all see these awful
statistics in our constituencies. A mother in Harlow came to me
and told me that her otherwise healthy child had started
compulsively washing her hands until they were raw and bleeding
since lockdown and not being at school.
Are our children getting the help that they need? The Children’s
Commissioner suggested that the number of children accessing the
treatment that they need has increased by just 4%. I believe that
there are ways in which we can turn the tide. Let us rocket-boost
the Government’s proposals to put mental health professionals in
every school, quicker than the current plans. The What Works
Centre for Wellbeing has identified that good mental health and
wellbeing at age 14 to 15 has a significant impact on educational
attainment at age 18. The Department for Education shows that
pupils with better emotional wellbeing at age seven were more
than one term ahead of pupils with poorer emotional wellbeing. I
have seen the impact of organisations such as Place2Be in schools
in Harlow, such as Stewards Academy, which benefits from its
services.
This is not just about the provision of mental health; it is also
about prevention and resilience. Last week, I visited a
remarkable school—Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre—where I met
students and the headteacher, who described the resilience and
preventive work that the school does. It employs a coach to work
with students to develop techniques to conquer their anxieties.
School assemblies are used to teach the tools needed to manage
highly pressured environments, using examples presented by
sporting personalities. In private study periods, the desks are
set up to resemble an exam hall to help pupils to become familiar
with the setting. That is the kind of arsenal that should be
replicated in schools around the country.
The second element of prevention must be considering extending
the school day for extracurricular activities. I welcome the
Government’s £5 billion for educational catch-up, but this should
also be about extracurricular activities, because we know that
young people who participate in after-school clubs are 20% less
likely to suffer from a mental health disorder. The Education
Policy Institute found that a longer school day increases
educational attainment by two to three months, and the Department
for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport found that an extended
school day can boost numeracy skills by 29%.
Why on earth will the Department for Education not at least pilot
proper experiments of extended school days in some disadvantaged
areas of the country, using civil society to provide those
extracurricular activities, so that we can really see the
difference they make; and then make that case to the Treasury?
Headteachers such as the head at Newham would love to be able to
offer their students extracurricular activities, just as the
private schools do, but they simply do not have the funding to do
so.
The Local Government Association estimates that the annual cost
of mental health problems in England is about £119 billion, but
rolling out counselling services to all state-funded secondary
schools could cost £100 million per annum. That would provide for
access to a school counsellor for at least two days a week for
more than 90% of schools. It makes economic sense to invest in
prevention, given that most mental health problems emerge before
the age of 25.
Finally, we know that social media is a wrecking ball for young
people’s mental health and wellbeing; it is damaging all of us,
but particularly young people. Research from the Education Policy
Institute and the Prince’s Trust found the damage that social
media is doing to teenagers’ mental health, and 79% of Barnardo’s
practitioners reported that children between the ages of 10 and
15 have accessed unsuitable or harmful content. One in three
girls said that they were unhappy with their personal appearance
by the age of 14.
The links are clear. Social media providers should not be allowed
to duck their responsibilities, and I urge the children’s
Minister to work with the Treasury to introduce a mental health
levy for social media giants so that they can take responsibility
for what is happening to our young children. Ofcom published a
report earlier this year that stated that the revenue of social
media companies is £4.8 billion. Introducing a 2% levy could
create a funding pot of around £100 million, which could be
distributed to schools to provide mental health support and
digital skills training for our young people to build the
resilience and online safety skills that they need. If the social
media companies knew that they had to pay the levy, they might at
last behave more responsibly towards our young people.
Social media firms and tech giants must do more given that much
of the problem is caused by the very apps and platforms that they
have built. We must rapidly deliver the commitments in the mental
health Green Paper to ensure that there is a mental health
professional based in every school—sooner rather than later.
Priority should be given to initiatives that support prevention
and teach resilience, as I highlighted with the example of Newham
Collegiate Sixth Form Centre. Only by doing so can we deal with
this epidemic and ensure that our children and young people
emerge from the pandemic resilient and able to climb the
education ladder of opportunity.
17:36:00
(North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne East (Mr Brown) on securing this debate, and I thank the
Backbench Business Committee. Talking about mental health is
something that we are doing more of in this place, and that is
good.
In August 2019, the Children’s Society produced “The Good
Childhood Report”, which found that an increasing number of young
people—around a quarter of a million—are now feeling low and
unhappy about their lives. The right hon. Member for Harlow
() has just mentioned the
pandemic. I recommend that people read the recent report by
King’s College London and Oxford University on the pandemic and
young people’s mental health, because we have not yet seen the
long-term effects.
In opening, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne East mentioned the statistic that 50% of mental health
problems develop before the age of 14, and 75% before the age of
24. We have to change attitudes in this country. Is mental health
a health issue? I have to say that for me, it is not; it is an
economic issue as well. If we are not going to invest money in
early interventions in schools, we will frankly not get the
economic rewards. Those interventions would not only improve
individuals’ lives, but save us money later on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs
Hodgson) mentioned CAMHS. I pay tribute to all who work in CAMHS,
but it will never work as it is set up at the moment. We can pour
as much money as we like into it, but it will just not work. We
have to try to stop the pipeline of young people going into
CAMHS, because some people will need assessment by CAMHS but a
lot of people do not. It is totally demoralising for young people
and their families to be stuck on waiting lists, so we need
processes to ensure that they can get early intervention.
I fully support school-based counselling as a way forward, but
this is a broader issue. It is not just about schools; it is
about the entire way we set up mental health services in this
country. We need an open access policy, where people can access
mental health services in the community and young people can
access them in schools. If we do not do that, we will always have
this system where we pour so much money into the medical side of
it without addressing the real problem: dealing with those who
are in crisis and need support earlier. Early intervention can
prevent people from calling on services in later life, and save
money. It is not just about saving money, though; it is about
ensuring that those people have fulfilling lives.
Are schools islands? No, they are not. They are part of local
communities, and it is vitally important that whatever we put
into schools—I would certainly make it mandatory for schools to
have school-based counselling —has to have links into local
communities. I consider myself very fortunate in County Durham.
We have a fantastic network of community-based, open-access,
voluntary sector organisations that get on and deal with helping
people in the community. If U Care Share is a suicide prevention
charity that goes into schools and works in the community around
young people and mental health. We have just had the new,
fantastic Think Positive PACT House project open in Stanley in my
constituency. It is a completely open-access hub. People can just
walk into it and get the support they need. The people there not
only give people support but, if they need to, refer them to more
intensive services. We have a fantastic organisation called
Rollercoaster based at the Riverside in Chester-le-Street, which
supports parents of young people suffering with mental illness.
We should not forget that it is not just the young person who is
affected; the issue often affects an entire family. Rollercoaster
is a fantastic organisation working on that.
In the system I would like to see, it is very important that we
have school-based counselling, but we have to have that network
of community open-access facilities that allow people, if they
want to, to access mental health services. That is not just about
people who are in crisis; it could just be people who want some
advice. We should do that. People say, “If you give it to the
voluntary sector, that is saving money”—no, it is not. Money
properly invested in the voluntary sector at the local level pays
dividends. It will not only lead to better outcomes, but be
better value for money.
I will finish on stigma, which I have done a lot of work on with
many Members of the House. We are making progress, but we have to
change people’s attitudes. It is that simple thing that if
someone had a broken leg or a physical disability, they would go
to a doctor or ask for help, but the problem is that many people
do not do that when they have a mental health condition. We have
to get the system to the point where people can just walk in, ask
for help and get it. I have great respect for GPs, and make no
criticism of the work they do, but they should not be the only
way of accessing those services. If we had that open-access
policy, community-based services and schools working with their
local communities, we would not only have better outcomes for
individuals, but save money. A lot of the cash that goes into
mental health services should be redirected into community
services and schools where people are accessing it.
To finish, the more we talk about this subject, the more
normalised we make it. If I may, I give one message to young
people today if they are suffering—we accept the huge pressures
on them today. It is not a sign of weakness to ask for help. It
is there, please ask for it.
17:43:00
(Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East
(Mr Brown) on securing this important debate. I rise to speak
both as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on youth
affairs and as the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent
Central, which has significant challenges due to multiple
deprivation factors in our city and the high levels of young
people in care—more than 1,000—which mean that our schools and
colleges have a vital counselling and safeguarding role. That
underpins our ambitions to give our young people the best
opportunities to achieve and fulfil their potential.
However, support for care leavers and those who live
independently is inconsistent and a high-risk area. These young
people are vulnerable, as well as being high-risk for mental
health issues. Young people’s mental health issues impact
educational outcomes and the ability to form friendships.
Problems can last into adulthood, affecting life chances and
physical health.
In Stoke-on-Trent, CAMHS is overstretched and cannot meet the
demands across the city. Students do not see the same person for
any follow-up appointments or long-term counselling treatment. In
addition, a 17-year-old student is unlikely to be seen until they
reach 18 due to the waiting list. Services are now focused on the
reactive as opposed to the preventive at a time of wide
recognition that investment must be focused on preventive actions
to avoid the physical and mental—and financial—cost of waiting
until a young person presents with a major trauma.
I welcome the recommendations in the national food strategy about
the importance of access for every child to nutritious food and
healthy eating, to address the causes of malnutrition in schools
and to tackle eating disorders, which recently have risen
significantly. Those issues are also probably picked up more by
counsellors than by other services.
This year, City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College’s
safeguarding, counselling and wellbeing team received a national
award for its emotional wellbeing project. I am sure the House
will join me in congratulating Jo Finn, Kirsty Cooper and Claire
Gaygan on the superb work that they do, which was made possible
by the opportunity area funding. The college looks after about
1,800 students, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The funding enabled the team to devise a model to meet the needs
of the young people of Stoke-on-Trent, rather than the other way
round. The impact of that is measurable in clinical data, as well
as other key performance indicators, including attendance,
progression and retention. Young people have engaged with the
service as it fits around their timetables, no travel is
involved, they see the purpose and they are referred quickly
internally to a mental health practitioner, an emotional
wellbeing worker, or one of the many groups that they can
attend.
Across the city, schools also take on the hugely important role
of safeguarding. They act as a triage service that notifies other
statutory services when they become aware of issues, as well as
providing a safe space where children can open up to a trusted
adult. I commend the excellent work undertaken in all our schools
and colleges. I have the utmost respect for all the teachers and
support staff who work so hard to provide not only quality
education but pastoral care to our children and young people. I
have heard many accounts of the daily challenges faced in
providing such support as an unfunded or temporarily funded
extra. I speak today in support of core funding for mental health
counselling and safeguarding provision to ensure that those with
added personal challenges and health issues have the best
possible chances throughout our education system.
In Stoke-on-Trent, loss of early intervention across the city
means more focus on higher-tier services that look at extreme
cases involving, for example, domestic abuse, substance misuse or
human trafficking. Schools and colleges are therefore having to
deal with intermediate services. Locally, Stoke-on-Trent has lost
essential services such as the school nurse service, which
provided preventive support and guidance, and sometimes immediate
referrals to A&E, particularly for mental health issues and
eating disorders; “Hidden Harm”, a drug service supporting young
people with parents with drug-related and mental health issues;
and the STAR—sex teenagers and relationships—service that
provided early intervention and support around healthy
relationships. As a result, schools and colleges are having to
pick that up.
The threshold for family services is extremely high, which means
that schools and colleges are also picking up that early
intervention work. They have the skills and experience to do
that, but they have no allocated budget or time. It is an
additional responsibility.
The hon. Lady is making some important points. When I tour
schools in my constituency, mental health is by far the No. 1
priority that every headteacher gives me. I have been struck by
the impact on staff, many of whom do not have the skills and
experience to deal with the level of mental health problems that
they face. I went into a secondary school a few days after a
young person had taken their own life. Just recently, I saw a
seven-year-old expressing violent behaviour and the teacher was
shaken up and had to take time out of the classroom. That is why
we need mental health support teams rolled out quickly. The
Government’s catch-up funding must provide not just academic
support but holistic support, including for mental health,
because teachers and headteachers are really struggling.
I thank the hon. Lady, and I agree with all she says.
The threshold for family services is extremely high, which means
that schools and colleges are picking up early intervention work.
The sixth-form college works specifically with 16 to
18-year-olds, which is a really challenging place to be. Legally,
this age group is still classed as children, but accessing
external support is increasingly challenging. There is a huge gap
between children’s and adults’ services, and the threshold for
adult services is even higher than for children’s services. At 18
someone will come under adult services, but it is almost
impossible to have an adult services support worker for an
18-year-old.
The issue of funding counselling services spans both the Health
and the Education Departments. Disappointingly the college
approached the clinical commissioning group to share costs and
provide additional support for both colleges in the city, which
would have cost about £40,000, but the CCG declined. As we move
to integrated care partnerships, I hope that it will take an
holistic view of preventive mental health support, and that means
working closely with education and schools.
I recognise that the cost of staffing counselling service
provision across all the schools in England is significant, but I
truly believe that it is a key element of levelling up. If areas
such as Stoke-on-Trent are to level up our educational
achievement, the things that hold us and our children and young
people back must be addressed by having extra counselling
services. We cannot raise standards without recognising the real
barriers that most vulnerable young people face and putting in
place core funding for essential school and college-based
counselling services. I believe that that will address these
issues, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas—there is a
need for these services in every area, but those areas need
disproportionately more, and any help that the Government provide
is most welcome. We need to recognise that some areas need more
help than others, and I hope that the Minister is listening.
17:51:00
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
It is a real pleasure to speak in today’s debate, and I thank my
right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr
Brown) and the right hon. Member for Harlow () for securing it.
Early intervention cuts harm, reduces risk now and in the long
term and, crucially, prevents ill health in the first place.
Children and young people are exposed to so many risks and so
much trauma in their lives. Bullying occurs, adverse childhood
experiences are real and there is the issue of social media. I
would also say to the Minister and his Department that the
pressure of the school system and exams is bearing down on
children.
If we do not produce well-rounded children at the end of their
schooling, what have we done to our young people? That is why it
is so important that today’s debate looks holistically not just
at children’s mental health issues but at their causes, and that
it addresses those too. That is particularly important given that
we heard that one in nine children had a diagnosable mental
health condition pre-pandemic, rising to one in six as a result
of covid—covid has of course borne down so heavily on so many of
our constituents.
A quarter of 17-year-olds have self-harmed, and 7% have attempted
suicide. The numbers are rising fast. This is an epidemic, and we
need the Government to shift resources now to get a grip on what
is happening. It is unforgivable that the Vale of York CCG budget
for child mental health is so limited and that just 0.8% of its
overall budget is spent on child mental health—just £55 per
child. Children wait 39 weeks for their first contact with the
service, and longer for treatment.
Surveys of schools in York show that we are crying out for
counsellors. Some schools have told me that they have been able
to find a few hours for wellbeing by replacing teacher time or by
benefiting from student counsellors or the school wellbeing
service. However, by their own admission, provision was too
little, too late or non-existent. Schools therefore need support.
When they do engage, of course, they have all sorts of challenges
around information sharing. While they understand the need for
confidentiality, they need to address those issues too. School
mental health should not be just another thing for teachers to
do. That is unsafe. What if they miss a diagnosis or an
intervention? That is where we need to have trained professionals
at the helm, creating healthy environments for children to be
nurtured in.
Of course, training teachers is important. We can address the
culture and climate of a school, but ultimately this must be a
job for health professionals. However, without a workforce plan,
supporting young people is not going to happen. I recall when the
Government focused on driving up the number of health
visitors—sadly that is now regressing fast. I was head of health
at Unite at the time. It was a priority for No.10. There was
action every day. Mountains were moved and people were trained.
However, there is no similar focus on the mental health and
wellbeing of our precious and often fragile young people and I
call on the Minister to look at that today. What happened around
training those health visitors? Can that be translated into
putting school counsellors in place, addressing a massive
shortage in the workforce? That was the case with health visitors
then and it is the case with counsellors now.
We need to ensure that a proper structure is in place. This is
not just about young people; it is also about parents. Parents
want support and to know how best to nurture their children
through a crisis, and through developing and increasing mental
health challenges. If a child broke their leg, they would know
exactly where to go, where to get support and—guess what—on day
one they would get the treatment they need. But it is months and
months for an injured mind and that is certainly not parity of
esteem. So why not make schools the hub for all child mental
health, from nursery to primary to secondary to college and to
university?
We also need community services. I urge the Minister to talk
about youth services, and the need to ensure that we properly
invest in those services as a hub in the community that children
can access. If we know about place and about the professionals we
need in that place, we can then have a programme to get to the
point we need to get to. That is what is missing. Where do people
go? We hear about family hubs, virtuous as they may be, but then
we have CAMHS services and GPs. It is a minefield and a mess, so
we must simplify the system and bring it into one place to help
families to know exactly where they are heading.
I am not trying to pathologise mental health—quite the opposite.
If we have the right professionals in place, they can easily
triage individuals into the right place and services. For some
people, that will involve an escalation to see an educational
psychologist, a psychiatrist, or other professionals. Perhaps it
will lead to social prescribing. I urge the Minister to look at
the success of the social prescribing programme. It is being
rolled out for adults, but what about engaging children and young
people in various things happening in their community? I commend
organisations such as The Island in my constituency, which
provides space and time for vulnerable young people to build
confidence and self-esteem, and to unlock their potential through
building positive mentoring relationships and unique programmes.
The testimonies from there are phenomenal.
In conclusion, let us agree a few principles. The first is place
and that is the educational setting. Then it is the workforce.
Then let us get a workforce plan in place. Let us consider the
recruitment and training we need, and let us have uncapped
funding so that we get on top of this crisis and address the
needs that follow. If the Education Minister does one thing in
his time in post, building and enhancing the wellbeing,
confidence and wholeness of a young person would be a far greater
legacy than perhaps any of his predecessors have ever
achieved.
17:58:00
(Penistone and Stocksbridge)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York Central
(), and I congratulate the
hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North () and my right hon.
Friend the Member for Harlow () on securing such an
important debate.
Some time ago, before I was an MP, I was a secondary school
science teacher. Like most busy secondary school teachers, I
taught more than 300 pupils every week. As a teacher, I was very
much focused on delivering the syllabus, ensuring that no one set
fire to the classroom, and getting through all the teaching
material on schedule. For a classroom teacher, it is important
that students are ready to learn, and we often think about that
in terms of, “Have they got the right pens and the right pencils?
Have they brought their textbooks and homework?” However, it is,
of course, also important that students are ready to learn
emotionally and mentally.
It is not uncommon for teachers to have students turn up to the
classroom who are just not in a fit state to learn. They might
need to go to pastoral support or take some time out. Sometimes,
the issues—a falling out between friends, an unexpectedly bad
test result, or perhaps not getting into a sports team—resolve
themselves on their own. But sometimes—often, in fact—the issues
are deeper and harder to fix. I am thinking of things such as low
self-esteem, a chaotic home life, abuse and, increasingly
commonly, sexual exploitation over the internet.
Members on both sides of the House have made excellent speeches
about how children are increasingly affected by mental health
challenges that they desperately need help with and are not going
to recover from on their own. Of course, some will have parents
and extended family who are able to help, but many will not. It
is not just important for their educational prospects that they
have access to counselling in school; it is also important for
their life chances in general that we address these problems
early to stop them becoming chronic and affecting their whole
lives. I do not want to repeat the many excellent remarks about
the challenges our children are facing and how it is so important
that all children have access to professional support.
Some schools are doing an amazing job already. Horizon Community
College in Barnsley in my constituency has a wellbeing centre on
site that is staffed by counsellors and people from the
multi-agency support team, who support not only the children in
the school but the whole community. That is a fantastic example,
and we should share such good practice. But the truth is that
many smaller schools do not have the resources to put in place
something as innovative as that, so I fully support the campaign
by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow to have a mental
health professional available in every school.
Of course we need counsellors in schools, but it is very
important that they are professional, that they follow guidance
and that they can be trusted. In response to a survey by the
Department for Education in 2017, only 47% of schools that
employed counsellors said that their counsellors were registered
with professional bodies, and one in seven said that their
counsellors had no qualifications at all. We need to be very
careful when we talk about counsellors in schools. They have a
very influential role and they deal with vulnerable children, who
often have mental health issues, as we know. They must fulfill
that role responsibly and professionally, and they must follow
guidance. I very much welcome the idea of community sector and
third sector involvement, but we have to be very careful about
the potential safeguarding issues if we do not follow the
guidance and do not ensure professionalism.
I want to raise what I think is a very dangerous potential
safeguarding issue that we are seeing in this area right now.
Schools are inviting outside organisations in to provide
counselling-type services and using their materials. Groups such
as Stonewall and Mermaids are teaching what I think are dangerous
and contested, extreme ideologies that do not have a basis in
science to our children, and it is contrary to DFE guidance. We
have groups such as the Allsorts Youth Project, which is teaching
children that there are more than two sexes, and the Diversity
Role Models group, which comes into school and provides workshops
but tells children that their sex was assigned to them at birth.
I have seen a video today by the Free to Be group telling
teachers that they might drive children to suicide if they do not
accept this ideology. And we have Stonewall wrongly interpreting
the Equality Act 2010 in a way that erodes the sex-based rights
particularly of girls, in a way that I think is very
dangerous.
I know of children who have been counselled by adults in school
that they would be happier if they changed their gender, and
frighteningly, they are being told not to tell their parents and
to keep this a secret. I know of schools where children are
disciplined for complaining about children of the opposite sex
being allowed to use their PE changing rooms. I think this
pushing of an extreme ideology that does not have a basis in
science and is highly contested is having terrible consequences,
and teachers and pupils are afraid to speak out.
In 2009, 72 children were referred to the Tavistock’s gender
identity service. In 2019, 2,364 children, of which two thirds
were girls, were sent to the service. That is a 5,000% increase
in the number of girls sent to the clinic in just 10 years. Many
of them go on to be prescribed puberty blockers, and research
suggests that 98% of those children are then given cross-sex
hormones. These are children who will become infertile, sterile
and have permanent loss of sexual function. How can 12, 13 or
14-year-olds consent to that? Many of these children have complex
mental health issues. Many are autistic and many have difficult
family backgrounds. Some are same-sex attracted, but are being
told that they should change their gender. I am afraid that that
is a consequence of a harm being done to our children as a direct
result of this agenda being pushed in schools contrary to DFE
guidance, which states:
“You should not reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by
suggesting that children might be a different gender”.
The guidance goes on to talk about what material can and cannot
be used.
I appreciate that the Minister has agreed to meet me to discuss
this issue. Absolutely, we need counsellors to be available in
school and we need more focus on wellbeing and emotional health.
However, we must have a robust safeguarding process to ensure
that the adults who go into schools and the materials they use
are registered, approved and in line with DFE guidance, and that
they are doing the best for our children, encouraging their
wellbeing and not pushing their own agenda. I look forward to
hearing from the Minister how he intends to ensure the guidance
is followed and I appreciate his offer to meet me.
Royal Assent
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent
Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the
following Act:
Environment Act 2021.
School-based Counselling Services
Debate resumed.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I also have to inform the House that I have to reduce the time
limit to six minutes. I call .
18:06:00
(Sheffield Central)
(Lab)
I am pleased to have the opportunity, after the last
contribution, to return the discussion to the topic under debate,
and to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne East (Mr Brown) and the right hon. Member for Harlow () for securing the debate on
which there has been, until the last contribution, a great deal
of consensus across the House.
Every year, as part of my annual community consultation at the
start of the year, I meet school students in each of the
secondary schools in my constituency. Maybe this is my naivety,
but the first I time did that I was genuinely shocked. When I
asked them, “What is the most important thing we could be doing
to change your lives?” they told me in each of the schools that
it was to provide access to mental health support. Over the past
10 years, I have heard the same message year after year.
As with so many issues, the pandemic has brought this crisis into
sharper relief. In Sheffield, I have heard from worried parents,
teachers and health professionals who tell me about the scale of
the problem with child and adolescent mental health and the lack
of available services. Last Friday, I discussed the position with
those at Sheffield Children’s Hospital. They are worried. For the
most serious cases, they are deeply concerned about the lack of
psychiatric beds for young people. They have worked hard to
narrow the gap between referral to CAMHS and first appointment,
but it is still about five months—five months—for that critical
initial intervention. That situation is reflected across the
country.
The former Children’s Commissioner highlighted in 2021 the fact
that over 500,000 children and young people were referred to
CAMHS in the previous two years. Of those, approximately 3,500
either had their referral closed or were still on the waiting
list at the end of the reporting period. The number of A&E
attendances by young people aged 18 or under with a recorded
diagnosis of a psychiatric condition has tripled since 2010. The
hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford () made a striking contribution
about the number of suicides. Our schools are caught in the
middle of this crisis, desperate to support their students but
without the resources to do so. Prior to the pandemic, one third
of schools did not provide any in-school mental health support.
Those that do provide support have to dip into their teaching
budgets, distracting from other priorities to do so. That is why
parents, along with professionals, believe that access to
counselling is so important.
Of course, it is not just about counselling. We need to be ahead
of the problem and view mental wellbeing in the same way as we
view physical wellbeing. Our Healthy Minds and Mental Health
Support Team in Sheffield works with local schools to develop a
culture of emotional wellbeing among young people, which includes
feeling safe and valued, with social connectedness and structure
in their lives. Young people want to be heard and to have staff
who understand that other things might be going on in their lives
and who know how to listen. That cannot be a bolt-on; it has to
be embedded in a school’s culture. For example, if a young person
is feeling anxious about exams, there are therapeutic
interventions to help them to manage that stress. But time and
funding to do that is vital to its success.
When young people are struggling, early intervention is key,
helping them to deal with the problems that they face when they
face them and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North
Durham (Mr Jones) pointed out, taking the pressure off services
further down the line that would be drawn in if the problem got
worse. That is why the Local Government Association recently
urged the Government to fully fund counselling services in all
state-funded secondary schools, providing immediate support. It
called for £100 million a year to
“ensure access to a…counsellor for at least two days a week for
more than 90 per cent of schools.”
The Government’s response is to ask more of already overstretched
school staff. The plans for mental health support teams are
welcome, but they do not go far enough. Encouraging mental health
leads in schools to undertake training to help to fill the gap by
equipping teachers to recognise problems and point students
towards help just will not do. As the assistant principal of one
of my local secondary schools said to me yesterday:
“Frankly I do not need to be trained in how to signpost young
people to mental health care providers, I need the money to be
invested in providing the actual mental health care.”
Clearly, support does not stop with counselling. How will CAMHS
waiting times be addressed? How many more mental health
professionals are being trained? As Members on both sides of the
House have consistently said, preventive and early intervention
is vital. Half of all mental health problems manifest by the age
of 14. It is striking that NHS England recognises that the
current investment in children and young people’s mental health
meets only 33% of need. That is truly shocking. What if that were
to apply to other illnesses? Is there any other kind of epidemic
that we would allow to run rampant among our children? Is there
any other type of illness that we would let lie untreated without
concern for the impact on future generations?
As chair of the all-party group on students, I co-led an inquiry
into the provision of mental health support for 16 to
21-year-olds moving into FE and HE. That demonstrated the numbers
who were transitioning into HE and FE without previously having
had support. When the Minister rises to say what the Government
have done, I hope that he will recognise what more needs to be
done, as has been reflected in contributions from Members on both
sides of the House.
18:12:00
(Peterborough) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East
(Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow () on securing this really
important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee
for allowing it.
Since I was elected, I have been working with young people from
Peterborough schools on mental health services for children and
young people. I am so lucky to have in my city a group of
talented, passionate young people who are ready and willing to
offer their time to work with their MP on this important issue. I
genuinely consider it a privilege to be working with many of
them. The speech that I am making today has in part been drafted
by those young people; they have provided me with quotes,
statistics and testimony. So I would like to thank Darya Robson,
Charlotte Hemens, Amelia Lawson, Austeya Dalansamskita and Amira
Dinari for all that they have done. They have done superb work
and they make me proud of Peterborough.
It is well documented that there has been an increasing demand
for mental health services for children and young people, much of
it because of the measures taken to prevent the spread of covid.
A recent survey by the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children reported that ChildLine helped as many as 67
children with suicidal thoughts a day. In my region, the
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust had 1,625
urgent referrals in the month of May 2021 alone, of which 795
were for potentially life-threatening conditions. We are facing a
mental health crisis in our young people and the more that we can
support them by providing access to early intervention in the
form of in-school counselling, the better things will be.
The group of young people I have been working with has also been
working with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical
commissioning group to secure a system with a single point of
referral and a new website. The group approached me last week to
request that I participate in this debate and campaign for
school-based counselling, which I am more than happy to do.
In 2020, amid the first wave of the covid pandemic, one in six
children aged five to 19 was identified as having a probable
mental health disorder—up from one in nine before the pandemic.
School should be the one safe place where every child can feel
valued, cared for and accepted. It is the perfect place for
students who are suffering with their mental health to access an
on-site qualified counsellor.
I feel that the current systems and mechanisms for mental health
provision are not serving young people as they should. In 2019,
more than half of GP referrals to child and adolescent mental
health services in the UK were rejected on the grounds that the
symptoms were not severe enough. Although other services such as
NHS mental health support teams are being developed, they are
patchy in coverage and tend to focus on parental interventions.
They are no substitute for on-site access to a qualified
counsellor.
All the evidence, including research undertaken in my county,
supports early intervention to prevent an issue from becoming a
full-blown crisis. School-based counselling can provide an
alternative option for young people who have nowhere else to
turn. The young people I have been working with are from a range
of schools and colleges; some are fortunate enough to have a
school-based counsellor, but others are not.
Students who benefit from easily accessible on-site counselling
testify that they feel more comfortable talking with a
professional with whom they have a long-term relationship because
of their presence in the school community. They also emphasise
the overwhelming advantage from not missing education time by
leaving school for external mental health appointments; a
pre-covid study found that absence due to poor mental health
accounted for more than 13% of school days lost. Students who
have this option are also free from the burden of waiting times,
referral lists and possible rejection for not meeting criteria,
and are less likely to need access to emergency services.
Providing school-based counselling means that no student slips
through the net. Students from schools and colleges that are not
able to offer the service tell a different story. One group I met
spoke of having access only to a trainee counsellor, who was
limited in the support that they could provide, meaning that
students waited a long time to access a non-qualified counsellor,
only to be signposted to outside organisations. One student told
me:
“Having a qualified counsellor would increase the attendance and
engagement of students. More importantly it would mean that
students can get the support they need without having to reach a
crisis point before any action is taken. It would mean that
students felt safer and more willing to seek the help they need
without feeling like a burden.”
The pandemic has put an enormous strain on our young people. I
believe that we owe it to them to ensure that they have the
support that they need at the place where they need it: their
school or college. I therefore urge Ministers to listen carefully
to the voices of young people from a variety of schools in my
constituency, including Peterborough School, the King’s School,
Thomas Deacon Academy and St School—lots of schools in my
constituency have taken the time to contact me about the subject.
Will Ministers please outline what they will do to get more
counsellors based in schools?
18:18:00
(Luton South) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne East (Mr Brown) and the right hon. Member for Harlow () on securing the debate.
Young people have faced a great deal of uncertainty and
disruption to their daily lives, education and support networks,
with many facing financial insecurity, trauma and bereavement. A
recent survey by YoungMinds found that two thirds of young people
aged 13 to 25 believed that the pandemic would have a negative
long-term impact on their mental health. In 2017, one in nine
children and young people was estimated to have a diagnosable
mental health condition; in September, NHS Digital suggested that
one in six young people now has a probable mental health
disorder.
Access to free, timely counselling interventions for young people
can play a critical role in responding to pre-existing mental
health needs and to those brought about by the pandemic or other
traumatic experiences. However, Government complacency has left
CAMHS overwhelmed and many schools without the necessary
resources. Before the pandemic, a third of schools did not
provide any in-school mental health support; recent research by
the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that as few as
48% of schools were providing on-site access to a counsellor.
I visited Downside Primary School in my constituency of Luton
South as part of UK Parliament Week last week. The headteacher
told me about the excellent work that the school is doing to
support children’s mental health needs. However, Downside has had
to resort to using its own grant funding to hire appropriate
mental wellbeing support, be it a counsellor or a psychologist,
to work with pupils directly in the school.
That is because of three overarching barriers restricting
children and young people’s access to mental health support.
First, CAMHS simply lacks the capacity to meet demand at the
level at which it is needed—often long before a child is in
crisis—and in a timely manner. Secondly, there is too much
bureaucracy and form-filling, restricting school staff’s ability
to secure mental health support for children quickly—perhaps in
relation to a longer-term condition, but particularly at that
early stage before the child reaches crisis. Thirdly, CAMHS is
not always reaching, or meeting the needs of, an ethnically
diverse and multi-faith community, owing to social stigma about
going “outside” home or school for support, particularly mental
health support. Expanding that support in schools to reduce
stigma is a priority for parents, who would be much more
comfortable about enabling their children to access it in a
school setting, and more financially able to do so. I would
welcome the Minister’s comments on this complex and sensitive
issue.
Parentkind’s Annual Parent Survey 2021 found that 41% of parents
wanted any additional school funding to be spent on child mental
health services, which meant that it was their second biggest
priority, while 88% wanted mental health development to be an
important focus within the curriculum. However, the Government
are only aiming to get mental health support teams to a quarter
of young people by 2023. Will the Minister explain why there is
such a lack of urgency on the Government’s part?
We need the Government to listen to the proposals put forward by
the Labour party, which would expand the mental health workforce,
deliver access to trained mental health counsellors in every
school—which, as we have heard, works well—and deliver support to
young people through open-access mental health hubs in every
community. Under our proposals, every secondary school would have
access to a full-time staff member, and primary schools would
have access to specialist staff time shared between different
local primary schools. Open-access mental health hubs would also
help us to reach marginalised children who would otherwise not
have access to mental health treatment.
I hope to hear from the Minister whether he agrees that a trained
mental health counsellor should be available in every school.
18:22:00
(Southport) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr
Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow () for securing the debate. It
is particularly close to my heart, because in my constituency we
have three of the UK’s leading specialist schools for children
with learning difficulties. I have had the privilege of visiting
them and speaking to staff and children, who I understand come
from miles around for the specialist care that Merefield,
Peterhouse and Presfield Schools provide. I realise how lucky we
are to have those wonderful schools in Southport on our doorstep,
and I also realise that, sadly, this is not a success shared
universally across the UK. Indeed, the schools themselves have
told me that they are at capacity, and that although they would
like to take on more children, they are often unable to do
so.
In the case of many children, it is not full-time specialist care
that they need, but simply a friendly, qualified counsellor to
whom they can speak in confidence, perhaps on a regular basis,
about their problems. Small interventions now can pay dividends
in the long run, helping children to achieve their potential.
I back the Government’s record on support for children’s mental
health, particularly during covid, and am proud to have voted for
many of those measures. In March last year, as covid took hold, I
was pleased to support the offer of £79 million to boost mental
health provision for children and young people. By April 2023,
that should enable nearly 3 million children to have access to
some 400 mental health support teams in schools and colleges.
These are noble goals and I fully support them, but there is
still much more to do.
Just two months later, we announced the provision of £17 million
to improve mental health and wellbeing support in schools and
colleges, with up to 7,800 institutions in England being offered
up to £9.5 million to train senior mental health leads. These
measures are clearly popular. The British Association for
Counselling and Psychotherapy reports that 72% of adults believe
that schools should offer counselling services, including some
79% of parents with children under the age of 18. Among 16 to
24-year-olds, the figure jumps to a staggering 83%. The support
is clearly there, but, while the Government are doing an
unprecedented amount to support mental health in schools,
specific measures such as increased provision of well-trained
schools-based counsellors would be of great benefit.
I do not think that fixing this is just a job for the Government.
It is right that the decisions are delegated to schools, and that
while the Government are clear that all schools should make
counselling services available to their pupils, it is ultimately
individual schools and colleges that know best what support to
offer their students. That is why they should have the freedom to
enact the Government’s recommendations as they wish. However, I
would encourage them to work closely with their local NHS,
clinical commissioning groups, councils and, most importantly,
parents and carers of children, to achieve the ends that we all
want to achieve.
In speaking to my constituents and helping them with their
casework, I understand the difficulty that many have had in
getting an educational health and care plan—an EHCP—once they are
referred to SEND. This plan is crucial to the wellbeing of some
children, as without it they will struggle to get the necessary
arrangements implemented in school that they need for their
mental wellbeing. My constituents suffer from a lack of
information throughout the process of getting an EHCP, as well as
ongoing delays, and they sometimes do not get the support they
need. Children can find this frustrating, and I fear a situation
where we see children with mental health issues being excluded
because they cannot get the treatment they so clearly need.
We need to see mental health support being provided as early as
possible in a child’s school career, so that it is there when
they need it, not years after their mental illness first occurs.
We need to look at what more we can do to support those with
moderate mental health problems who do not need specialist
schools, but rather qualified counsellors. We need to hit this
Government’s ambitious target and then set even more ambitious
ones until 100% of children have access to mental health support
in schools.
18:26:00
(Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
I welcome this debate. I worked in childcare many years ago, when
it was difficult to get people to comprehend the scale of mental
illness among children and young people. We have moved on from
there, and I am really grateful to the right hon. Member for
Harlow () for securing this debate. I
chaired the all-party parliamentary group for parental
participation in education last week, and we heard that the
charity Parentkind had produced a survey revealing parents’
concerns. It found that 41% of parents now see the need for
additional resources to be spent on mental health services for
children, and that this was their second highest priority after
the need for additional learning resources.
We also received a briefing from the division of educational and
child psychology of the British Psychological Society. I declare
an interest, in that my wife is an educational psychologist, but
as she reminds me, she is also a constituent so she has the right
to lobby me, even if it is at the breakfast table. That report
confirmed what my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon
Tyne East (Mr Brown) said about incidence. The NHS’s own survey
showed that in 2020, one in six children—that is 16%—aged between
five and 16 were identified as having a problem mental disorder,
increasing from one in nine in 2017. What I found startling was
that the same study showed that only six in 10 children aged
between five and 16 with a problem mental disorder had regular
support from their school or college.
I fully welcome the additional funds that the Government have
given, but most stakeholders believe that it is inadequate to
meet the scale of the problem. My right hon. Friend pointed out
that even by 2023, only 3 million of the 9.5 million children
will receive the support that they need. What we have been
arguing for is a comprehensive, fully functioning and fully
funded pathway to support children with mental health problems,
and that starts in school. That pathway usually starts as a
result of a parent or teacher’s action, but some children now are
self-reporting their mental health issues.
A crucial point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for York
Central () about a workforce
strategy to provide support for teachers and special educational
needs co-ordinators, but in this debate we are emphasising the
fact that there have to be comprehensive counselling services
embedded within those schools as well. Let me now give a plug for
educational psychologists. They have the expertise to provide
early help and targeted mental health interventions. They work
with the counselling services, where they exist, and also with
families. They are often the access points to child and adult
mental health services and other health provision that is
available, often through local health services and now through
local authorities as well.
While we welcome the additional resources, I think we are arguing
for the Government to stand back and look for that comprehensive
approach, based on a work- force strategy and on the investment
overall.
I refer back to educational psychologists. There are 3,000 of
them in this country at the moment. That means one educational
psychologist for every 3,500 five to 19-year-olds—or, because
they now deal with those aged nought to 25, one for every 5,000.
One early investment could be the expansion of educational
psychology training places on the three-year doctoral programme,
which could be readily invested in and could turn around
relatively quickly to meet the increase in demand if we are to
construct the comprehensive pathway service for which we have all
been campaigning for so long. I will leave it at that point,
because I know that other hon. Members want to speak.
18:30:00
(Bath) (LD)
Throughout this debate, we have heard time and again how
important early intervention is. It is essential to a person’s
proper recovery from a mental illness, and that is specifically
true for children and young people suffering from an eating
disorder. I speak today as the chair of the all-party
parliamentary group on eating disorders to highlight once more
the huge problem that eating disorders pose and the big
difference that early intervention can make.
Eating disorders have no single cause, but they have the highest
mortality rate of all mental health disorders. I say that again:
they have the highest mortality rate of all mental health
disorders. Recovery lasts, on average, three times as long as the
disorder itself. One third of people suffering from an eating
disorder get better, one third stay the same—a life sentence in
itself—and one third get worse; quite a lot of them, tragically,
either die of malnutrition or take their own lives.
All too often, eating disorders can go undiagnosed and untreated.
Although they do not discriminate, school-aged children are a
particularly vulnerable group; most eating disorders develop
during adolescence. According to data from NHS England, the
number of children and young people waiting for eating disorder
treatment has increased significantly in 2021 compared with
previous years. In June, that figure was four times higher than
at the same point in 2020. Eating disorders thrive in the
shadows, where there is no social contact, and the pandemic has
been particularly bad for sufferers from eating disorders.
There is much that we must do to improve outcomes for all with
eating disorders. The APPG is looking into research funding,
reducing waiting times and improving access to treatment, but the
best possible thing we can do is to help children and young
people to avoid reaching crisis point in the first place. The
first point of contact for many children and young people in the
UK is their school. Speaking to a counsellor can help them to
cope with the different circumstances they face in their lives,
within a familiar setting—yes, sometimes some of the problems our
young people face are not so severe, but often they are. School
is a daily contact that they have and a setting where they can
access counselling.
I am not denying that other centres would be useful too, but
surely we need to do more in schools. School staff are ideally
placed to spot the early signs of an eating disorder, as well as
the potential factors that can lead to the development of one. I
have been a secondary school teacher too, and the problem is
finding the time in the school day to really go into where a
young person has an issue. It is that extra time and extra
counselling resource that schools need.
I highlight the excellent work of the eating disorder charity
Beat, which supports the APPG and runs training courses aimed at
school professionals. Access to support should never be a
postcode lottery, but England lags behind the rest of our family
of nations, where school counselling services have statutory
funding. Research shows that as few as 48% of schools provide
on-site access to a counsellor, with a growing divide between
affluent and more deprived communities. School counsellors can
provide that crucial missing middle between the lower-level
intervention traditionally provided in schools and specialist
children’s and young people’s mental health services.
Many leading mental health charities have got behind the campaign
for a counsellor in every school in England, and I urge the
Minister to support that call. Access to counselling should not
just be for the schools and families that have the budget to fund
this essential provision. I know that every school in Bath is
committed not only to our children’s education, but to their
wellbeing. They must be given the additional funding that they
need to offer sustainable counselling provision as part of the
wider mental health support package available to students. I
repeat what many Members from across the House have said: this is
the biggest issue that school leaders come to us with—they say
that when I go into schools to talk to them. They want more
mental health support for their young people.
There is no easy solution on the issue of mental health, but we
cannot afford to cut corners, especially on the mental wellbeing
of children and young people. We need a multifaceted approach
that recognises the value of our schools, community services and
society as a whole. Let me say again to the Minister: please pay
attention to eating disorders, as they have reached epidemic
levels and we need to do something about them.
18:35:00
(Hampstead and Kilburn)
(Lab)
I thank the right hon. Member for Harlow () and my right hon. Friend the
Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for leading this
important debate on school-based counselling. It is a testament
to how much we value this topic that on the day the House rises
everyone has stayed back to contribute to this debate.
Lots of issues have been raised. The importance of looking at
mental health holistically was talked about passionately by my
hon. Friend the Member for York Central (). The right hon. Member
for Harlow passionately discussed the impact of social media on
mental health. We heard repeatedly about the stigma around
tackling mental health, including from my right hon. Friend.
Every Member who spoke talked about the impact of covid on young
people. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South () cited the survey by the
charity YoungMinds showing that throughout this pandemic, in the
past 18 months, the mental health problems for two thirds of
young people have been exacerbated enormously. My right hon.
Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East also talked about
covid-19 and how it has restricted access to mental health
services for far too many people. He also made important points
about the impact on deaf children, and similar points were made
to me when I met a group of headteachers from special needs
schools, all of whom talked about the impact covid has had on
people with physical disabilities and the mental health impact
that moves on from there.
This is a perfect storm, which is likely to have devastating
consequences for young people. We are already starting to see
this impact as constituency MPs, with an astonishing 96% increase
in under-18s being referred to mental health services between
spring 2019 and spring 2021, according to the Royal College of
Psychiatrists. Yet just two in five children with a diagnosed
condition can actually access specialist support. My hon. Friend
the Member for Sheffield Central () talked powerfully about how
shocked he was when he heard local children talk about the lack
of access to specialist support. I felt similarly when I spoke to
a group of young people in my constituency. When we are sitting
here in the Chamber, we do not often think about how people
struggle to access support. We think it is there and they can
access it, but I felt the same as he did when I spoke to people.
I was shocked when I read that an estimated one in six children
and young people now have a mental health condition—that has
increased from one in nine just four years ago. It is also
shocking to see that the number of accident and emergency
attendances for young people with a psychiatric condition has
tripled since then. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central
used a statistic that I had also looked up, which was that in
2017 almost a quarter of 17-year-olds had self-harmed. The
situation was bad before and it is getting worse, just at the
same time as access to mental health services, both in and out of
school, has been restricted.
Many of the answers to how we tackle this crisis can relate to
school. As well as wider positive impacts that schooling can
have, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne
East talked about ample evidence that school-based counselling
can improve wellbeing and attainment. My hon. Friend the Member
for Luton South talked about the IPPR report, which I also read
and which showed that far fewer state schools are providing
on-site counselling than were doing so a decade ago, when nine in
10 schools offered it—the figure is now about half that,
according to a recent survey of teachers. When children returned
to school after lockdown, just one in five teachers thought that
their school’s mental health services were sufficient to support
their pupils. We know how much pressure teachers are under, so I
hope that the Minister will pay attention to teachers returning
to find that not enough mental health support was in place.
My hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West
(Mrs Hodgson) and for York Central both talked about the
importance of trained professionals, and the former talked about
the missing middle. I know from my experience as a school
governor, and we will all know from our experiences in our
constituencies, that many teachers and school staff are currently
taking on additional responsibilities for supporting pupils’
mental health, on top of their day jobs. They are mostly not
trained to do it and neither do they have the resource to do
it.
The Labour party believes that there is an alternative. My right
hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) talked about
the economics of mental health and how it pays off to invest in
it, which is what Labour believes. We want to give all schools
the additional resources they need to hire specialist counselling
and mental health support. That was one of the key commitments of
the £15 billion children’s recovery plan to deal with the fallout
of the pandemic that Labour announced earlier this year. The
Welsh Labour Government have made huge progress on this issue by
legislating to put counselling support for 10 to 18-year-olds on
a statutory footing.
Under Labour’s costed proposals, every secondary school would
have a full-time staff member whose job is to support pupils’
mental health, and primary schools would have access to such
specialist support, shared among schools in the local area. As my
hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said, that would
mean that problems would be caught and resolved before they could
escalate, and teachers and other school staff would be able to
focus on their jobs. We know what demanding jobs they have
already.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West
said, schools have to be part of the solution, but fixing the
crisis in children and young people’s mental health cannot just
be left to schools, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes
and Harlington () said. Even with the support
and resources that we would provide if we were in government, we
would have to look at the support provided by CAMHS and other NHS
services as well, and I am afraid that the situation in that
respect is even worse. My right hon. Friend the Member for North
Durham talked about early intervention; the truth is that waiting
lists for mental health support are currently unacceptably long,
thereby allowing problems to escalate well before young people
can be seen by a specialist. My hon. Friend the Member for
Sheffield Central also made that point.
I say again that there is an alternative. Labour has pledged to
implement a new national NHS target that guarantees mental health
support within a month, backed up by our plan to recruit 12,000
mental health professionals and to introduce a lock to ensure
that mental health spending always rises when NHS funding is
increased.
Lots of people talked about the local organisations that are so
important in our areas. My right hon. Friend the Member for North
Durham talked about Rollercoaster and my hon. Friend the Member
for York Central talked about the Island. In both Camden and
Brent in my constituency, several organisations provide support
for young people. We in the Labour party want to make sure that
every community has an open-access mental health hub for children
and young people. Having visible, easy-to-find, drop-in mental
health support centres is so important and complements the
counselling support offered in schools, because the hubs ensure
that those who are marginalised or feel unable to come forward at
school can get the support they need.
There is a crisis of children and young people’s mental health in
this country that we cannot ignore. The crisis is deepening as a
result of the pandemic, as we heard over and over again, and the
mental health support that is available in and out of school is
not sufficient to tackle it. Those facts have come through loudly
and clearly in this important debate. The situation in far too
many schools does not match the ambition that parents, teachers
and we in the Labour have for our children, mainly because of the
huge pressures on school budgets following real-terms cuts of 9%
in the past decade. We really need a proper plan from the
Government to address that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington
advocated well for his constituent and his wife, but he also
spoke passionately about a comprehensive strategy, which is what
I urge the Minister to produce. It is time for change. We want
the Minister to look at what Labour proposes on in-school
counselling and a one-month support guarantee. We want mental
health workforce expansion, community hubs and much else. The
wellbeing, learning and prospects of an entire generation could
be transformed by the bold step change in mental health support
that we are calling for. I hope the Minister will listen to all
the voices in the House that have made their points so
passionately today.
18:44:00
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education ()
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East
(Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow () on securing this important
debate. I am conscious that time has been short, but I would like
to thank all those who have spoken for their constructive
contributions to this debate. Colleagues will know me well enough
to know that I have never refused a meeting with a colleague and,
although I will not be able to cover all of the points raised
today, I would be very happy to meet any Member from across the
House to further discuss the points that they have raised. I have
already accepted a request from my hon. Friend the Member for
Penistone and Stocksbridge ().
We know that mental health can have a profound impact on the
whole of a child’s life. That is why the Government are committed
to treating mental health with the same urgency as physical
health and to deliver parity of esteem, and we are supporting
mental health and wellbeing at all stages of people’s lives. We
recognise that schools are in a unique position as they are able
to help to prevent mental health problems by promoting resilience
as part of an integrated, whole school approach that is tailored
to the needs of their pupils.
Improving mental health starts with promoting good mental
wellbeing and ensuring that children and young people get the
help and support that they need. Schools with the right support
from specialist services can play a vital role in that, which is
why improving mental health support for schools has been a
long-standing priority for this Government, with a shared
approach led by the Department of Health and Social Care and
supported by the Department for Education.
Supporting mental health and wellbeing is especially important at
this time. As many Members from across the Chamber have
referenced today, the covid-19 pandemic has had a particular
impact on the wellbeing and mental health of children and young
people. The Government’s national survey on the mental health of
children and young people in England, which was published in
September, found that rates of probable mental health disorder in
six to 16-year-olds have risen from one in nine in 2017 to one in
six in 2021. Those findings, which are helping us to ensure that
the action we are taking is informed by the most up-to-date
evidence, reinforce what we have been hearing from schools and
colleges about how many children face issues and the need to
continue to act.
Because of that, the Government have made children’s wellbeing
and mental health a central part of our response to the
coronavirus pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, we have
prioritised keeping schools open above all else, as long as it
was safe to do so, because it is so vital for children and young
people’s wellbeing, as well as their education.
The Government have also invested £7 million this year in our
Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme. That programme
enabled local authorities to provide further support to schools
and colleges to develop their curriculum and pastoral care
provision in the context of the pandemic. The programme built on
our £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme in 2020,
which provided free expert training, support and resources for
education staff dealing with children and young people
experiencing additional pressures, including trauma, anxiety, or
grief. Around 12,000 schools and colleges across the country have
benefited from that support, which was delivered through local
authorities.
In addition, we are investing up to £5 billion to support
recovery for children and young people who need it most. That
includes an additional £1 billion of new recovery premium funding
for disadvantaged pupils. Our guidance is clear that schools can
use that funding, as well as other funding such as pupil premium,
to support their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, including
for counselling and other therapeutic services, alongside
supporting their academic attainment.
As we move forward, the Government remain committed to improving
the support available to schools by helping them to put in place
whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing which are
tailored to the particular needs of their pupils. We know that
school-based counselling by well-qualified practitioners can be
an effective part of a whole school approach and that many
schools already provide access to some counselling support. Our
national survey of school provision, published in 2017, found
that 61% of schools offered counselling services, with 84% of
secondary schools providing their pupils with access to
counselling support.
To further support schools that have decided that counselling
support is the appropriate path for their pupils, we have
produced guidance on how to deliver high-quality, school-based
counselling. In the light of the impacts of the pandemic, we have
committed to updating that guidance to make sure that it reflects
the current context.
The guidance sets out our strong expectation that, over time, all
schools will offer counselling services, alongside other
interventions, because evidence suggests that counselling can
have a positive effect, in particular on children’s psychological
distress, self-esteem and general wellbeing. However, we have not
mandated that all schools should provide access to counselling
services as we believe that it is vital that they have the
freedom to decide what support to offer their pupils based on
their particular needs and drawing on an evidence base of
effective practice.
We are taking action to help schools to build their capability to
promote children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing,
as well as ensuring that those who need help with their mental
health receive appropriate support. The Government are providing
£9.5 million to offer senior mental health lead training to about
a third of all state schools and colleges in England in 2021-22.
Part of the commitment that we made in our 2017 Green Paper,
“Transforming children and young people’s mental health
provision”, was to offer this training to all state schools and
colleges by 2025. The senior mental health lead is a strategic
leadership role, with responsibility for overseeing the school’s
whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
As part of this training, leads will learn about how to develop a
culture and ethos that promotes positive mental health and
wellbeing, as well as how to make the best use of local
resources, including counselling services, to support children
and young people who are experiencing issues. I am pleased to
report that nearly a quarter of schools and colleges in
England—about 6,000—have already applied for one of these £1,200
grants. Many senior mental health leads have already started
their training, which will enable them to start to apply their
learning this academic year. That will help them to build on the
incredible work that they and their colleagues have done
throughout the pandemic to promote and support the wellbeing of
their pupils.
Another important part of the whole school approach is ensuring
that all pupils understand how to promote their own mental health
and wellbeing, and that they have the knowledge and confidence to
seek additional support when it is needed. That is why, in
September 2020, we made health education compulsory—
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Call me old-fashioned,
but I thought that in a wind-up the Minister was supposed to
respond to the debate. He has now been on his feet for seven or
eight minutes, and all we have heard is a pre-prepared, read-out
speech.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order
for the Chair. If he does not like what the Minister is saying,
he is at liberty to intervene on him and suggest that he says
something else. The Minister also has plenty more time to make
plenty more points.
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to the right hon.
Gentleman, I am responding to what the Government are doing on
the issues that have been raised.
As I mentioned, another important part of the whole school
approach is ensuring that all pupils understand how to promote
their own mental health and wellbeing. We must ensure that they
have the knowledge and confidence to seek additional support when
it is needed. That is why we made health education compulsory for
pupils receiving primary and secondary education, alongside
relationships education in all primary schools, and relationships
and sex education in all secondary schools. Through these new
subjects, all children will be taught about mental health,
including how to recognise and manage any wellbeing issues. We
have published a support package for schools to ensure that
teachers have the confidence to deliver the subjects,
specifically including the content on mental health and
wellbeing.
Let me turn to the mental health support teams, which have been
referenced by numerous Members across the Chamber. Although
schools have an important role to play, teachers are not mental
health professionals and they should not be expected to act as
such. Where more serious problems occur, schools should expect
the pupil and their family to be able to access support from
specialist children and young people’s mental health services,
voluntary organisations and local GP practices.
I have been encouraged by Madam Deputy Speaker to intervene. The
point that Opposition Members are trying to make is that schools
need to have in-house support, rather than just signposting to
outside support. We would like to hear what the Minister has to
say about that.
The mental health support teams are exactly that. Let me also
respond in passing to the hon. Lady’s point about eating
disorders. I am very much alive to that issue, and would be happy
to meet her to discuss it at length. It certainly concerns me, as
I know it concerns our colleagues at the Department of Health and
Social Care.
We mentioned support in schools. The new mental health support
teams are really important in this regard. The teams comprise
newly-trained education mental health practitioners—an entirely
new role—as well as more senior clinicians and therapists. They
work alongside provisions such as counselling services to help to
ensure that children and young people get the support that they
need. They support staff in schools and colleges to develop their
whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing, provide
early intervention for those experiencing mild to moderate
issues, and liaise with external specialist services where
additional support is needed, which it sometimes is.
The Minister talks about mental health support teams being able
to provide practical support to children with problems. What
assessment has the Department made of the coverage that will be
provided by these teams in terms of the massive problem that
Members on both sides of the House have described?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, and I will come on
to that exact point. We have over 180 mental health support teams
already operational and supporting children and young people in
around 3,000 schools and colleges at present. That covers about
15% of pupils in England, as has been pointed out. These teams
have played a vital role throughout the pandemic, adapting their
services to make sure that children and young people have
continued to receive the support that they needed remotely. We
have 104 additional teams in development, with more to be
commissioned this year. That will help the Government to deliver
the commitment made in the NHS long-term plan for these teams to
reach a quarter of all schools a year earlier than planned, in
2022.
Earlier this year, as part of the Government’s commitment to
build back better, the hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the
£500 million mental health recovery action plan was launched.
That included an additional £79 million that will help to
accelerate the coverage of these teams, with over 100 additional
teams set to be established during 2021-22. It will bring the
total number of those teams to around 400, and that will cover
approximately 3 million children and young people—about 35% of
all pupils in England—by 2023. Of course, our aspiration and
ambition are to go further.
The Minister talks about the number of teams. Could he give an
estimate of the number of full-time equivalent professional
mental health workers who are part of those teams supporting
pupils in our schools?
I do not have those figures to hand, but I am very happy to write
to the hon. Gentleman with that information.
In the longer term, ensuring that children and young people have
access to the mental health support that they need remains a
priority for the Government. The NHS long-term plan sets out our
commitment to ensure that funding for children and young people’s
mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS
funding and total mental health spending. By 2023-24, at least an
additional 345,000 children and young people aged nought to 25
will be able to access support via NHS-funded mental health
services, including mental health support teams.
In conclusion—I am conscious that the right hon. Member for
Newcastle upon Tyne East needs some time to wind up—I am grateful
for the support that the right hon. Member and my right hon.
Friend the Member for Harlow have given to this agenda. Good
mental health and wellbeing for our children and young people
remains a priority for the Government, particularly in the light
of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic. We want to make sure that
all our children are able to fulfil their potential, and we
continue to tackle the injustice of mental health problems so
that future generations can develop into confident adults,
equipped to go as far as their talents will take them.
18:57:00
I was really proud of the parliamentary Labour party this
afternoon. I thought the speeches from Labour Members were very
clear in their purpose and full of compassion for people who have
every right to look to us to help them on this important topic. I
would say the same of Members from all the Opposition parties. I
thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn () for her Front-Bench
contribution, which I thought was excellent.
I thank the Minister for catching the tone and spirit of the
debate. Clearly, we will want to pursue the conversation, and I
welcome his willingness to engage, perhaps after he has had his
meeting with his hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and
Stocksbridge (), which I frankly do not envy
him. I thought that Conservative colleagues’ contributions were
absolutely excellent—[Interruption.] All right; on the whole. I
particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent
Central (), and I say to her that, yes, her constituents have
our congratulations and praise for the award that they have won
in starting off down a track that the Opposition so strongly
support.
There is a lot of common ground and a lot of common purpose, and
even the Minister was not so far away from where we want to get
to. This is the start of a journey, rather than the end.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the provision of school-based
counselling services.
|
