A Path to Better Mental Health Provision in School: How can Mental Health Leads be Best Supported in Delivering Support to Students

Supervisors: Katy Sivyer, Cora Sargeant & Ed Sayer 

In 2017 the government green paper titled 'Transforming children and young people's mental health provision' outlined new responsibilities for schools and colleges in relation to mental health.

One of these responsibilities was for all settings to have a designated mental health lead by 2025.

Literature up to this point has sought to explore how mental health is supported in schools and gain a better understanding of school staff's awareness and thinking around this and has shown that while professionals have a good level of knowledge and are sensitive to identifying mental health difficulties, they lack confidence in their abilities and knowledge of how to support this.

In addition to these findings, further studies have cited funding, staff attitudes and work and time pressures as major barriers to providing good mental health provision. Staff do, however, cite a colleague with expertise in mental health as a facilitator to effectively supporting student's wellbeing.

Paper 1 is a qualitative synthesis looking to gather and summarise these findings to look at school staff's experiences of supporting students' mental health and wellbeing with the aim of identifying barriers and facilitators to good practice around this.

Paper 2 is a natural continuation of this, conducting semi-structured interviews specifically with mental health leads looking to explore how they came into role, what their work looks like and how they can best be supported within school and by external agencies to provide a good level of support and guidance to their students'.