The Local Government Association (LGA) has called for a major investment in school-based mental health counselling services.
Ensuring every pupil in secondary education and alternative provision has access to on-site school counselling would cost about £90m annually, says the LGA, but could be paid for out of the £1.7bn the government has pledged in recent years for improving children's mental health services.
The call has been backed by specialist counselling organisations, who say investing in school-based services would be a better use of resources than measures in the children's mental health green paper, published last December. This included plans to spend £300m over three years to train teaching staff in mental health awareness, appoint school mental health leads, and boost links between schools and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).
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