DfE announces expansion of school mental health initiative

Childcare minister Sam Gyimah has said more schools will join a programme of joint working with child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), following on from a pilot that launched last year.

The initiative involves having one contact point in CAMHS working with a number of schools in one area, and acting as the “go-to” person for these schools. Each school also has one staff member who works with this CAMHS contact.

Gyimah said he will be expanding the programme to more schools to “continue the momentum”.

“Over the coming months we will be working with NHS England, the Anna Freud Centre, and our evaluators to scale-up this approach in your areas. This means working with more schools, including those that are harder to reach,” he said in a speech at the Anna Freud Centre.

“This will involve a lot of work. But, I know there is strong local endorsement for this, and that we are pushing at an open door.”

"We know that the system is not working effectively," Gyimah said. "And we know that we cannot change the system overnight."

"But I do hope that through these pilots we have started the journey towards a better, more coherent system between schools and CAMHS, so that people can navigate this landscape more easily."

Gyimah announced £1.5m funding last December to improve joint working in 250 schools in 22 pilot areas, where each CAMHS contact is working with groups of 10 schools. The results of the pilot will be available in the autumn, Gyimah said.

The government has set aside £1.5bn to improve mental health services for children and young people by 2020.

Sue Bailey, chair of the Children and Young People's Mental Health Coalition said it is vital that schools and CAMHS work well together.
 
"We know that the relationship between schools and CAMHS can be difficult, often with one not understanding the other, or even knowing each other.

"From our work in schools, we have seen that what seems to work well is when there is a good relationship between schools and CAMHS, and an agreement on how they will work together," she said.
 
"We are very pleased to hear about the expansion of these pilot projects. The roll-out needs to be guided by the evidence, but we have heard good anecdotal evidence about how well these single point of contact pilots are working.

"Ideally we would like to see all children and young people benefiting from this work as soon as possible."