Mental health projects get innovation fund backing

Speaking today at the Early Intervention Foundation's first national conference, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said three of the new schemes would provide families with mental health support.

The National Implementation Service has been handed £4.1m to extend its support to over 70 councils across the country, helping young people to tackle problem behaviours and substance abuse, and stopping them from entering care.

Under the initiative, families on the edge of crisis due to troubled behaviour or drug and alcohol misuse will receive specialist support to keep them together and get their lives back on track.

Meanwhile, Action for Children has been given £3.4m to work with Barnet, Harrow, and Hounslow councils to provide specialist counselling and therapy to young people and their families who are at risk from criminal or risky behaviour.

And Priory Education Services and Suffolk County Council have been awarded £1m to pilot a new type of residential home, combining mental health treatment with a smaller and more personal setting to help teenagers and their families through crisis periods, in order to avoid the need for longer-term placements.

Speaking at the conference, Morgan said: "Between them, these projects are benefitting from £8.5m of funding from the Department for Education.

"Not only will they impact on the lives of hundreds of teenagers directly, but the programme will help to rethink the way that services offer support across the country."

In addition, an NSPCC project aimed at keeping troubled families together has secured £1m of funding. The scheme, which will work closely with Lambeth Council and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, will see health professionals and social workers teaming up to assess next steps for children under five who have been placed in foster care due to neglect.

Experts will work with the birth family, the foster carer and the child to decide if the child can be supported at home, or whether it would be in their best interests for them to go into care on a more permanent basis.

Wigan Council has also been awarded £920,000 to create a special team of social care and mental health experts to offer crisis support for young people with mental health issues or at risk of entering care.

And Cambridgeshire County Council has been handed £589,000 to extend the help on offer available to troubled families, particularly those who have been involved or are at risk from problematic sexual behaviour.

Morgan said that in addition to the innovation funding announced today, the DfE and the Department of Health will be supporting a small number of early adopter teaching partnerships to test and refine new and innovative approaches to delivering high-quality training for social work students and qualified practitioners.

She said the move would increase expertise in the sector, and ensure that children get the help they need, when they need it.

The latest funding announcement raises the total number of projects to receive backing through the £100m innovation fund to 20.