A study involving staff from 341 schools has reported “dramatic increases” in mental health issues among pupils.
However, because of the lack of capacity in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), some schools are now only referring pupils if there is an immediate risk of harm.
The research has been led by the Anna Freud Centre, a children’s mental health charity, and also reveals that more than two-thirds of schools now have some specialist support available, including anger management, mindfulness, peer support – this was much more common in secondary schools.
One teacher told researchers: “Over the years the burden on schools to deal with mental health issues has increased dramatically.
Schools are having to ‘pick up the pieces’ that social services, the NHS and other organisations should be dealing with. The problem is that schools lack the time, money and training.”
A second added: “CAMHS is doing the best that they can with the very limited resources that they have – we now don’t even bother referring to CAMHS unless we can justifiably say there is clear and present risk of significant harm to either themselves or others around them.
“The chronic funding shortage is just storing up problems for the future. It is the untold scandal in education of our generation.”
This limited capacity of CAMHS is seen by respondents in the study as the greatest barrier to ensuring students get the help they need.
Study author Dr Helen Sharpe, a lecturer in health and social science at the University of Edinburgh, said: “It is encouraging that school staff did not view attitudes toward mental health problems as being a barrier to accessing mental health support, because we know that historically this has been an important factor in why people don’t ask for help.”
The Anna Freud Centre is campaigning for a “step change” to improve the state of children’s mental health care in England. It wants to see much greater integration of mental health support and services into our education, health and social care systems, built around the needs of young people and their families and not around institutions.
It is also calling for there to be at least one member of staff trained in mental health issues in every school in the country.
Co-author Tanya Lereya, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Anna Freud Centre, said: “Our results suggest that it is particularly important to find ways to increase the availability of provision, both in the local area and within schools themselves, to support the mental health of young people.”
Miranda Wolpert, director of service improvement and evaluation at the Anna Freud Centre, said: “CAMHS are already stretched to deal with this issue, which is why we need to look at more and closer collaboration between the service and schools, particularly around the capacity and capability of schools to tackle this more effectively on the ground. Having trained staff in every school would go a long way to building that capacity and capability.”
The Anna Freud Centre has been leading a consortium of experts to develop and deliver training to around 900 education and mental health professionals, with the aim of improving joint working between schools and CAMHS. This work is part of the on-going Department for Education and NHS England schools mental health links pilot.
Visit www.annafreud.org