Classroom counsellor
Laura McCardle
Monday, May 26, 2014
Laura McCardle meets Catherine Roche, chief executive of Place2Be.
Just a few months into the job as chief executive of school-based counselling service Place2Be, Catherine Roche is gearing up for the introduction of what will be the biggest change in special educational needs (SEN) provision for a generation. From September, reforms to the SEN system will see schools given greater responsibility for commissioning services for SEN pupils by developing "local offers" for what support is available.
With about half of the children that Place2Be provides counselling services to having some form of SEN, the impact of the changes could be significant for the charity.
Roche says the reforms will make it easier for schools to provide support for children with additional mental health needs and is hopeful that Place2Be's services will feature in many councils' "local offers".
"The really positive thing is that it is identifying children's emotional and mental health as a clear category, and stating that schools should commission counselling - that's the first time we've seen that," says Roche.
"The people who know their children and really understand are the teachers and head teachers. So giving the budget and the commissioning responsibility to the people who can best understand children's needs and can buy in the services they think will best fit in with their children's needs is a really good thing."
Place2Be provides a counselling service in 210 primary and secondary schools, offering support with issues such as bullying, domestic violence and bereavement to up to 75,000 pupils. It works with children, teachers and parents to ensure all parties are engaged with every aspect of a child's support.
Teachers refer children to Place2Be and work with the charity on the needs assessment of a child, which then provides counselling to both children and parents.
According to Roche, the school-based model has endless benefits for children who need help with issues that affect their mental and emotional wellbeing.
"It's really accessible as opposed to it being a more removed process that could be scary and about illness in the school.
"It completely naturalises a mental health service; there's no stigma attached and it's part and parcel of what exists within the school.
"It's about working with the school and looking at how we, plus the school, can best address those issues or other specialists that we can bring in."
She says the best evidence of the charity's impact is the support from the head teachers who continue to buy in Place2Be's services.
Positive feedback
Roche also credits feedback from the parents and children the charity works with as proof of its impact - although the honour of having the Duchess of Cambridge as its royal patron surely adds some weight to the impact of its work.
"The feedback from parents, teachers and children is overwhelmingly positive and that's about having a partnership with the school," she says.
"We've had incredibly positive feedback through Ofsted demonstrating we are a good use of pupil premium spend.
"The thing I think makes Place2Be stand out is the quantitative data we provide to look at outcomes of the service – 75 per cent of children we work with one-to-one show positive change in their mental health."
Roche has been involved with the charity for more than 17 years, first offering support on a pro bono basis in 1997 before joining permanently as chief operating officer in 2003. A decade later, she was appointed deputy chief executive before taking over from Place2Be's founder Benita Refson as chief executive in March this year.
During her time at Place2Be, the charity has grown from a few employees and a £5,000 annual turnover to one with more than 300 staff, 1,000 volunteers and an £11.5m turnover.
Roche has also watched policy develop over time, particularly the recognition of how "crucial" early intervention is.
"It's so blindingly obvious to invest in early intervention to stop the cost down the line and how to almost stop the steam train that's coming in terms of spend and the waste of human potential."
She hopes the argument for early intervention within children's mental health will be strengthened by a government review of children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). "The CAMHS review is well under way within the Department of Health and we see ourselves as part of comprehensive CAMHS," she says.
"Hopefully, the review will shine a bit of a spotlight on early intervention and the need for it in the earlier tiers, as well as investment in treatment and the more acute needs at the end of the spectrum."
In particular, Roche says there is need for greater emphasis on early intervention in substance misuse. To that end, Place2Be recently took part in a pilot project in Manchester where it referred parents to Action on Addiction for treatment.
The project saw the charities work with families who Roche says may otherwise have gone unnoticed. "The idea of us working together was we could reach families who are perhaps under the radar - where we know there is substance misuse issues because it comes through in the work with children or the parents," she explains.
"The programme is about helping parents recognise the impact of substance misuse on the family - and, more importantly, on the children.
"It's about both of us bringing a set of expertise. There has been an awful lot of learning for both of us."
As a result of some "incredibly positive results", the charities are about to extend the scheme to Harlow in Essex, Shoreditch in London and Sunderland.
Roche hopes the project - funded by Comic Relief and the Royal Fund - will form an evidence-based model that will eventually be commissioned by early intervention agencies as part of a government scheme. "The aim is that we will really develop an excellent model working together, gather a good evidence base and look to commissioners such as Troubled Families teams to commission the programme going forward," she says.
Expanding services
In relation to its core work, Roche hopes Place2Be services will be based in a further 300 primary schools by 2018. In addition, an investment from philanthropic organisation Impetus - The Private Equity Foundation has funded a five-year programme to help the charity develop its work with secondary schools.
Already, within the first year of the initiative, Place2Be has built its original cohort of 10 schools to 70 - something Roche is "thrilled" about because it has enabled the charity to develop its work around the primary-secondary transition.
Reiterating her belief in the power of early intervention, Roche says it is vital that children are supported through what can often be a challenging period. "We work with young people up to the age of 14 because all of the evidence suggests that if you intervene early and before the age of 14, you have a real chance of turning things around," she says.
"There's a great chance of a young person not being able to make the most of their time in school, not achieving to their full potential, not engaging or being excluded.
"Our experience has been that they value short intervention, so it's about finding the right type of intervention for meeting the needs of young people."
Overall, Roche says the key to providing effective support to children and young people with mental health needs, and their parents, is agencies from across health and social care, the public and voluntary sectors working together to develop well-rounded, joined-up support.
"I think there is more opportunity around working in partnership with the statutory sector," she explains.
"We are all there with outcomes at the heart and it's about how we make the best use of the resources we have, so working in partnership with the statutory sector would be a great thing - to weave together excellent pathways so that we make the best use of resources across education and health."
Catherine Roche - CV
- Born in Co Waterford in the Republic of Ireland, Roche trained as a secondary school teacher of English and French
- She spent four years in France teaching English in secondary and adult education
- She was awarded the Shannon Fellowship and completed an MBA at Boston University
- Before joining Place2Be, Roche was a strategic planning and organisational development specialist at KPMG Consulting
- She became involved with Place2Be in 1996, offering pro bono advice
- She joined the staff as chief operating officer in 2003 before becoming the deputy chief executive in 2013
- She is married with a five-year-old son