Leadership

Schools And Youth Mental Health: A Briefing On Current Challenges And Ways Forward

This joint report from school mental health organisation Minds Ahead and the education and youth think-tank LKMCo, concludes that a scheme modelled on Teach First should be set up in schools to train mental health specialists to work with young people.

The training would involve learning how to manage problems that children face at school such as “bullying, exam stress and low moods”.

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      string(5303) "The government’s current work to improve mental health support for children and young people is an important but modest step towards achieving its longer term aspirations. It includes initiatives to increase the proportion of children and young people who need support accessing NHS-funded mental health services from around 25% to 35%, estimated to be equivalent to treating an additional 70,000 children and young people per year, between 2015-16 and 2020-21. This reflects the Department’s assessment of what is possible within current funding and staffing constraints. However, the NAO has found significant weaknesses and unreliability in the government’s data which undermines its understanding of its progress and whether additional funding has been spent as intended. In particular, the NHS cannot reliably track progress against one of its key targets to treat an additional 70,000 children and young people. Slow progress on increasing the mental health workforce in England by 40% (4,500 staff) is emerging as a major risk to delivering the government’s ambitions and there are currently no data available to monitor any increase. New government estimates of the number of children and young people with a mental health condition are likely to be higher than previously estimated, which will make it even harder for the government to achieve its long-term ambitions. If prevalence is 50% higher than the previous 2004 estimate, this would mean NHS England would have to treat an additional 186,000 children and young people in order to achieve an access rate of 35% by 2020-21. The report recommends that the Department, working in conjunction with other departments, should set out the scale of the needs of young people requiring mental health services, building on the new prevalence data when available and identify what work and resources are needed to implement its 2015 strategy, Future in Mind, in full. Key Findings: The government faces significant challenges in transforming children and young people’s mental health services, as part of its commitment to parity of esteem between physical and mental health services. The government has not set out and costed what it must do to achieve Future in Mind in full. The government does not have cross-government accountability arrangements in place to ensure Future in Mind is delivered as intended. NHS England cannot be certain all the additional £1.4 billion funding to date was spent as intended, and does not have strong levers to ensure that CCGs increase spending in line with their intentions. Local transformation plans set out how local areas intend to transform services but national accountability is weak. The NHS is working to improve key information on how many children and young people receive mental health services, how much it spends on providing those services, and which treatments are most effective. Significant data weaknesses limit the government’s ability to understand progress towards delivering its ambitions around access to children and young people’s NHS-funded services. The number of children and young people with a mental health condition who need help is likely to be higher than previously estimated, which will make it even harder to achieve the government’s ambition. Slow progress on workforce expansion is emerging as a major risk to delivering the government’s ambitions, and understanding progress is significantly hindered by a lack of data. There is still limited visibility of what public sector bodies outside the health sector spend on mental health services, and what services they provide. Actions for Government: Set out the scale of the challenge, and understand the characteristics and trends in the needs of young people requiring mental health services, building on the new prevalence data when available. Set out what actions and resources are required to implement Future in Mind in full, and the main long-term and interim objectives and outcomes. The plans should set out what different parts of government are expected to deliver, be clear about the main uncertainties and build in opportunities to review plans. Establish clear leadership of the portfolio and responsibility for taking it forward and bringing together the national and local bodies, and individual programmes, intended to deliver Future in Mind. Put in place mechanisms to improve understanding of spend and activity on mental health support across the system, particularly in schools and local authorities. Undertake work to better understand the impact of preventative services and early intervention for children and young people on the demand for more intensive or specialist mental health services. WEB LINK Improving Children And Young People’s Mental Health ServicesKeywords Children, young people, mental health services, support, funding, staffing constraints, resources, strategy "
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Leadership

Improving Children And Young People’s Mental Health Services

10 Oct 2018

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      string(5893) "Donovan Miller.The Foundation runs a Cricket Academy for 16-24 year olds. Some are excluded from school, others are former offenders. There are gang members and Afghan refugees on the project. Young people struggling to find their way in life, who without assistance, might never fulfil their true potential. During their first year at the Academy, the youngsters work with coaches on a personal development plan that aims to help them become more employable. They get visits from local employers and careers advisers, whose staff talk to the young people about job hunting, CVs, courses and aspirations. They also take a cricket coaching course, and in year two, will coach their own community teams. When they do play cricket, coaches focus on how aspects of the game apply to wider life. 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Inclusion

Good Sport, Bad Sport and Children's Mental Health

17 Oct 2017

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      string(5707) "ResourceCHILDREN’S WORKFORCE STRATEGY UPDATEOriginal DocumentChildren’s Workforce Strategy – The Government’s response to the consultation. This is a 44-page update to the original Children’s Workforce Strategy, published on the 1 April 2005. In light of views expressed in the original consultation, this update sets out how the government intends to take work forward and provides:· A summary of the responses.· What it will do to meet the key priorities and challenges.· The action plan.KeywordsChildren’s workforceSummaryThere is significant agreement on the importance of the children’s workforce and of making tangible progress to build on improvements already made.The visionThe DfES vision is for a children’s workforce that:· Strives to achieve the best possible outcomes for all children and young people and reduce inequalities between the most disadvantaged and the rest· Is competent, confident and safe to work with children and young people· People aspire to be part of and want to remain in where they can develop their skills and build satisfying and rewarding careers· Parent, children and young people trust and respect.Responses:· Responses show overwhelming support for the ambition of building a world-class workforce for children and young people.· There is clear evidence that quality will lead to improved outcomes.· While responses welcomed the vision set out in April 2005, they also highlighted critical aspects that were missing, including:1. ensuring that the workforce is safe to work with children;2. ensuring that it is focused on improving outcomes; and3. ensuring that the strategy addresses the needs of families and carers as well as children and young people themselves.· The successful implementation of the vision and the outcomes set out in Every Child Matters depends on a wide range of partners across different agencies and organisations working together to develop more integrated and responsive services for children, young people and families.· The need to develop new ways of working will be true across all services for children and young people. To deliver integrated solutions within each area’s Children and Young People’s Plan:1. we must ensure that all those working with or in contact with children and young people recognise their responsibilities to take action to safeguard and promote children’s welfare whilst carrying out their normal duties;2. we must continue to transform the early years – with new professional roles to raise the status of the work and the quality of services delivered;3. in both health and social care we need to develop a workforce which finds new approaches to meet the challenges of the ‘National Service Framework for Children’, ‘Young People and Maternity Services’, ‘Choosing Health’, and the recently published White Paper, ‘Our health, our care, our say: a new direction for community services’;4. in schools, the workforce will need to continue to modernise to meet the challenges of extended provision and a more personalised curriculum for all pupils;5. the integrated youth services proposed in the Youth Matters Green Paper will build on the existing skills of the workforce but will require changes to their roles and practices if we are to deliver more effective and co-ordinated services for young people; and6. for looked after children we are considering what wide-ranging reforms are needed in order to improve outcomes.Priorities:· work with the Department of Health (DH) and Skills for Care to present an analysis of present and future social worker supply and recommendations for action;· ask CWDC to explore with the CWN the potential for extending current data collection to establish a baseline assessment of ethnicity, gender, age and disability at all levels of the children’s workforce;· put in place the infrastructure that will support and challenge local change programmes, continuing to invest in and build the capacity of the CWDC and CWN;· build an integrated qualifications framework, based on the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge, that will make a reality of improved career pathways within and across the workforce. Simplified, streamlined, more transparent qualifications and development frameworks will also increase the confidence that employers, employees, students and children, young people and families have in the workforce;· develop new roles and new opportunities, at graduate level, in the early years’ workforce. At the same time we have to increase the opportunities for the existing workforce to progress, to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities; and· use the Options for Excellence1 review to agree the challenges and propose ways forward for social work and social care.Key actions:The Government’s response to the consultation on the Children’s Workforce Strategy proposes to:· Build an integrated qualifications framework, based on the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge that will help improve career pathways across the workforce. Simplified, streamlined, more transparent qualifications and development frameworks will also increase the confidence that employers, employees, students and children, young people and families have in the workforce.· Develop new roles and new opportunities at graduate level in the early years’ workforce. This will help make sure there is a graduate leader in every full day care setting by 2015.· Use the joint DfES/DH Options for Excellence review to agree the challenges and way forward for"
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Leadership

Children’s Workforce Strategy – The Government’s response to

1 Feb 2006

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      string(322) "Mental Health services for children pre-Covid-10 were already overwhelmed. We now need something more than reactive, over-stretched services and inadequate services. The preventative strategy that Positive Education seems to offer could be the way forward, explain Andy Mellor and Jim Nicholson."
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      string(5786) "The accountability machine sucks the life from schools and pupils and makes Year 6 a bizarre and unbalanced final year in primary for millions of children. When accountability measures are the main measures of success, schools and staff work increasingly long hours to meet those targets. The current system of accountability is unfair on all schools but it is especially unfair on schools serving disadvantaged communities.The impact of “chasing the targets/accountability measures” has seen thousands of teachers and school leaders leave the profession for reasons of principle and their own health and wellbeing (a third of new school leaders leave the position within 1-3 years of starting).What is now clear, thanks to the Schools Minister’s candid approach with the Education Select Committee, is that the SATs have nothing to do with the children and essentially the pressure our children feel is purely to provide the government with data for school accountability. As professionals with the care and wellbeing of our pupils at the very core of what we do, we must ask ourselves if this is right.CrisisReferrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services are at record levels. One educator in a NW Council area said that there were 1000 pupils not receiving the support they needed each year in his town. This chart demonstrates the scale of the problem.Is it little wonder that the EPI report Access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in 2019, finds a stark gap between available support and the needs of the estimated 1.25 million children and young people who have a diagnosable mental health condition:Only 1 in 3 children with a diagnosable condition are accessing treatment.In 2018-2019, approximately a quarter (26%) of children and young people (CYP) referred to specialist mental health services were not accepted into treatment.If we apply this to the number of children and young people accessing NHS funded community mental health services in 2018-19 reported by NHS England, it is estimated that approximately 132,700 children were referred for but not accepted into treatment.A possible solutionDuring lockdown many educators questioned the way things were done and the impact it had. The vast majority of school leaders think it’s time for change. What Covid has taught us is that we need a ‘quality of life’ response incorporating physical and mental wellbeing. This would be one of the twin tracks to school improvement, alongside high quality teaching and learning.There are many ways to building strong pupil mental health, character and resilience. One effective and evidenced way of doing this is through the Positive Education approach. The information below is taken from https://positivepsychology.com/perma-model/Seligman’s PERMA Model in briefMartin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, developed PERMA, a five core element of psychological well-being and happiness. Seligman believes that these five elements can help people work towards a life of fulfilment, happiness, and meaning.Institutions can use this model to develop programmes that help people discover and use new cognitive and emotional tools.P – Positive EmotionThis element is, perhaps, the most obvious connection to happiness. Focusing on positive emotions is more than smiling: it is the ability to remain optimistic and view one’s past, present, and future from a constructive perspective.A positive view can help in relationships and work and inspire others to be more creative and take more chances.How do we distinguish between pleasure and enjoyment for this? Pleasure is connected to satisfying bodily needs for survival, such as thirst, hunger, and sleep. Enjoyment comes from intellectual stimulation and creativity so when a child completes a complex Lego car that requires their concentration, they may feel immense satisfaction with the end product..This type of positive emotion is crucial. It can help people enjoys the daily tasks in their lives and persevere with challenges they will face by remaining optimistic about eventual outcomes.E – EngagementActivities that meet our need for engagement flood the body with positive neurotransmitters and hormones that elevate one’s sense of well-being. This engagement helps us remain present, as well as synthesize the activities where we find calm, focus, and joy.People find enjoyment in different things, whether it’s playing an instrument, playing a sport, dancing, working on an interesting project at work or a hobby. When time “flies by” during an activity, it is because people experience a sense of engagement. We all need something in our lives that is absorbing, that creates a ‘flow’ that stretches our intelligence, skills, and emotional capabilities.R – RelationshipsRelationships and social connections are crucial to meaningful lives. We are social animals who are hard-wired to bond and depend on other humans. Hence, the basic need for healthy relationships with parents, siblings, peers, co-workers, and friends. Strong relationships also provide support in difficult times that require resilience.M – MeaningHaving an answer as to, ‘Why are we on this earth?, is a key ingredient that can drive us towards fulfilment. Religion and spirituality provide many people with meaning, as can working for a good company, raising children, volunteering for a greater cause, and expressing ourselves creatively.A – AccomplishmentsWe need goals and ambition in life to thrive and flourish. These help keep us on track and afford a sense"
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Behaviour Management

The Mental Health Crisis in Schools Is Going To Explode: Can Positive Education Prevent A Meltdown?

22 Jul 2020