School pupils in Mansfield and Ashfield are set to benefit from additional mental health support following an announcement by Education Secretary Damian Hinds.
Nottinghamshire County Council and NHS commissioners have successfully been granted extra funding by the government to extend a Trailblazer pilot to Mansfield and Ashfield to transform children’s mental health in the school setting. The original pilot was agreed for the Rushcliffe and Gedling areas last year and mental health teams in schools will roll out in these areas in December 2019. The extra funding is for two years and it will enable a mental health support team to be set up which will cover 20 schools across the Mansfield and Ashfield areas, offering increased access to emotional and wellbeing support. The teams, which will be staffed by mental health professionals, from Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust, will work with children and young people with mild to moderate emotional, mental health and well-being problems.
More schools across Nottinghamshire will also have the opportunity to attend free Mental Health in Schools Link Workshops. These workshops bring together education and mental health staff to discuss and plan how they can support children and young people’s mental health in schools. 109 schools attended these workshops last year. Nationally, one in eight young people aged five to 19 had a diagnosable mental health condition in 2017 and teenagers with a mental health disorder are more than twice as likely to have a mental disorder in adulthood. Mansfield and Ashfield has the highest number of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) contacts in the County.
Councillor Philip Owen, Chair of the County Council’s Children and Young People’s Committee, said: “We are delighted that we have been successful in getting this additional support, which will benefit young people from Mansfield and Ashfield and their carers. This puts us in an excellent position to develop and improve mental health support in our local schools, which play a vital role in identifying mental health needs and building resilience in young people.”
Dr Gavin Lunn, Clinical Chair, Mansfield and Ashfield CCG says: “This scheme is a great opportunity to focus on early intervention. We know young people and their parents and carers want to be able to access mental health services quickly and that the earlier mental health problems are identified the better the health outcomes. Having mental health support teams in schools will provide additional support for well-being and mental health directly to children and young people and offer an easier and more familiar setting for them to access care when they need it.”
Julie Attfield is Interim Director of Mental Health with Nottingham shire Healthcare: “We are delighted at this extra investment in the health and wellbeing of young people in Mansfield and Ashfield areas. The mental health of young people is of the utmost importance and if we can help and support young people in a timely manner then we can prevent them using mental health services in the future.
That’s good for the young people, their families and society in general.” Further funding was announced by the Government for the Nottingham City area, which will be used to develop mental health support teams across 40 schools in the area. The teams in the City, Mansfield and Ashfield areas will all be operational from September 2020.