Cornwall primary schools benefit from boost in targeted mental health support
The NHS is providing in-school help for five to eleven year olds across the Duchy
Last updated 3rd Jul 2022
Primary schools across Cornwall are benefitting from a boost in targeted mental health support.
An NHS service providing in-school mental health support for five to 11-year-olds across the Duchy.
Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health support teams (MHSTs) in schools, has been put in place to help school staff, governors, parents and carers, and pupils to work together to support mental health and wellbeing, creating a school-wide approach.
Over the last three years, the Trust, in partnership with the University of Exeter, has trained around 40 staff to work within the MHSTs service, now covering half (97) of the primary schools across Cornwall.
As a result, schools like Kilkhampton Junior and Infant School, near Bude, now have their own educational mental health practitioner for half-a-day a week. Practitioners help the school to run group sessions, and offer individual therapy for children, often accompanied by parents or carers. The focused individual work uses an approach called Low Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LICBT).
Paul Winstanley, service lead for Mental Health Support Teams in Schools, said: “Generally, pupils who come forward for help are struggling with issues such as anxiety or low mood, but we work on a broad range of issues and where we are not the right response, we try to support the school to better understand where this might come from. Our direct help includes for children presenting with sleep difficulties, anxiety about a range of issues and we specifically try to support those with worries about transitioning into secondary school."
Kilkhampton Junior and Infant School has been working with educational mental health practitioner, Anna Smith, for over 12 months. They say their school is benefiting from Anna’s presence each week.
The school’s head teacher, Michael Watson said: “I am really delighted with it. We jumped at the chance to sign up and I’ve been very impressed with Anna’s impact on the school and our children. We have really been able to reflect upon and improve the culture we wish to create around mental health. Not only are we reducing stigma around mental health, but the work Anna does with us is also helping give the children some crucial life-skills and knowledge that then reduces the need for referrals into other services.”
The school have installed ‘mental health buddies’ where a group of children have volunteered to be trained by Anna to look out for others within the school who may be feeling worried or low. They’ve also seen the creation of worry boxes which are helping children to express their feelings.
The school say that the feedback from parents has been nothing but positive. Michael added: “We carried out an audit and gathered feedback from our teachers and parents. We now have a dedicated working party and action plans which are helping to ensure we really embed a positive culture towards emotional wellbeing,
“COVID-19 and everything which came with it has impacted children everywhere, and the mental health aspects are important and not to be ignored. We spend long periods of the day with these children, and we know that if they are not in a good place mentally, they are not in a strong position to do their best learning. Our proactive approach to mental health helps the children’s all-round development. If from a young age, children can learn life-long habits for managing emotional health, it becomes transformative for society.”