Mental health in secondary schools

[Bigfatlie]

I have NC for this.

I am part of the pastoral team of a large secondary school, and I have noticed not just a massive decline in the mental health of young people (and their parents for that matter) but also, from my own perspective, the provision has progressively dwindled. This scares me so much.

I used to love my job and felt that it mattered as I performed a pivotal role in a child's wellbeing, road to recovery, etc. I have done this for almost 9 years with the school having provided zero training for me. Nothing at all. I have made it my business to educate myself, and this has been at my own cost and in my own time. In those 9 years I have dealt with more and more complex cases, including attempted suicides, and I still have not received any training, or support for myself for that matter.

I am not sure how much parents are aware that many of the pastoral members that look after your child's mental health are not trained at all. They're just people like you and me who probably got a lowly paid job at a school in order to work term time only.

What I am hearing now pretty much on a daily bases is parents asking school to provide interventions because their GP has said 'school will put something in place'. I don't know about other schools, but where I work, this means that very complex cases (neurodiversity, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, self harm, potential mental health disorders, etc), get shoved towards a member of the pastoral team who's meant to make a difference to that child's wellbeing, having had zero training, and having to balance the demands placed upon them from other aspects of school that get prioritised over mental health EVERY TIME: attendance, uniform, detentions, and general compliance.

I am not sure how much parents realise that schools are not always honest about the fact that they do not have qualified staff to deal with most emerging mental health difficulties. Quite often we have children joining in Year 7 with a history of mental health difficulties, and parents expect school to deploy a whole host of interventions. Whilst I believe that schools are ideally placed to deal with the mental health difficulties of our young people, this is simply not the reality because there's no funding and no training is allocated to non-teaching staff . The result is that our young people deteriorate, and the adults being paid nearly minimum wage for addressing these difficulties are on constant burnout mode, often developing mental health issues themselves.

The difficulty for parents of course is the fact that when they take their child to the GP, they learn that CAMHS' waiting list is 2 to 3 years, and then get reassured by the GP that 'school will put something in place'. Parents out there, you want to question schools as to what qualifications the person looking after your child's mental health has. What the interventions that schools put in place really mean. Their frequency, consistency, are they evidence based... Don't be fobbed off. Make sure they're not just paying lip service, because from where I am standing, that's all that's on offer right now.

I think school will go out to make it hard for us . ( I hope I'm wrong) shouting down the phone that I will loose my child benefit. Telling us /my sons outside help for his mental health will be refused because he's not in school. Told us lots of things that are not true. So I just can't see them helping.

@Enko

Yes it is certainly a good thing to have level 4 counsellors in school. Most don’t to be fair in my area so having one is a privilege. To be honest I don’t think people who don’t work in the profession have a clue about counselling and their levels of training etc.

With your experience and further training it sounds like you’ll have lots of options for work in the NHS (if you wanted too, I know working in CAHMS isn’t for everyone). My local CAHMS will only accept level 7s as a minimum.

I honestly don't understand why is so much harder to get help for children /teens . Think its awful. My son had to overdose in order to get help . I wounder how many children have died.

@Bigfatlie I was very vocal about getting my DS mental health support, I did feel like I was failing him not due to poor parenting but because his school environment was very damaging to his mental health. DS has SEN and his school were convinced they could meet his needs, I could see him deteriorating so looked for another school. By the time his school supported the move (it was to a specialist provision) DS was broken. The new school has worked wonders, they didn’t need to put any particular mental health support into place it was the environment, understanding staff and school ethos which made the difference.

@Anonforthis122 You don’t need the school to help. DS has a right to the information covered by a SAR. The fact DS is unable to attend school and then college and has significant MH difficulties will be enough to get you over the initial threshold - although the LA may force you to appeal as many LAs turn down the vast majority of requests regardless of what evidence is provided.

CAMHS don't work for everyone either, if you read the posts on here. Do a search for CAMHS. In my experience, both personal and professional, it's short term prescriptive, directive therapy where the young person has no autonomy (letters sent to their parents with things they've disclosed confidentially to their therapist) and usually always CBT based as that's the short term therapy the NHS funds research in to.
It works for some, but for others CBT is just like gaslighting, ie. you've experienced this trauma, let's look at how unhelpful thoughts are holding you back from forgetting your trauma and come up with some new thoughts" rather than "let's process and work through the trauma you've been through" (takes time and isn't CBT)
Despite being qualified to NHS/CAMHs requirements, I wouldn't work there. Ethically dubious.

@Enko

Also I forgot to add that the level 7 counsellors have had more extensive personal therapy as part of their masters/further training in order to be registered. Personally I don’t think counsellors should be practicing at all without their own personal therapy and there are many level 4s who have never been on the opposite side of the seats.

There are some great practitioners out there I am certainly not disputing that, however there are far too many people who go into the profession in order to just heal themselves and they lack insight into their own psyche.

I have had colleagues working specifically with children and young people who were in 2-3 hours of personal therapy a week, sometimes more if they trained at the Tavistock. Therefore if you’re working in CAHMS under high thresholds with some of the most traumatised children in society it is imperative you’ve gone through rigorous training/personal therapy. Many were counsellors like yourself before they undertook their masters, or many were healthcare practitioners such as mental health nurses etc.

Its a messy old field is counselling and the fact that anyone can just call themselves one is quite shocking.

@novemberlights

I think I would call the whole of the NHS MH services ethically dubious to be honest.

It was a Chams referral for my youngest after she took an overdose that made me want to train. She and I were up to 4 am in the morning and the CHAMs assessor guy told me it was fine to send her to school the next morning (no I didn't) and after we were told she was not a priority. She had just tried to overdose but that was not serious enough she was on a 16 month wait. 2 years prior my other child had the most amazing support from Chams

We were lucky the school my youngest was in. Had an amazing pastoral support and she was well supported and is doing good at university now.

I have done my placement with Place2be for the last year(I finish in 2 weeks) in a busy secondary school there are 8 counsellors in training and 1 School Pratitioner Manager (qualified counsellor) so 9 people doing counselling and there is a waiting list. This is 35 +10(the spm's hours) so 45 hours of counselling a week and there is still a waiting list.

I do a 2nd placement with a bereavement service .

It's hugely interesting work. Yes one day I may apply to work with Chams but I'm.not sure. We will see

Also 3 went on to train further i forgot to count me

Hopefully things will work out.. now that camhs are on board. Thank you for your help 🌺

I agree it's shocking. Oddly I am in training with someone x Travistock and she doesn't rate them. Very odd to hear but just shows how different we all are.

My level 4 required 50 personal counselling hours that's 30 more than BACP requires. A friend from level 3 went person. Centered and only did the 20. I do not think that is enough.

When I applied for my current course a qualified counsellor with her own practice was on the information call. She said aghast.. "I am not supposed to go back to counselling am I. ? I've done my hours in training" I was shocked to think a 7 year qualified practitioner did not feel even once a client had trickery her enough to return to private practice.. also rather thankful to see she is not attending the course (that requires a further 160 counselling hours and personal counselling over the next 3 years)

@Enko

Yes it’s a murky field at times. I have met some really, really horrible people who have been counsellors. Pretty standard actually in the field and everyone who works in it will tell you the same,
it’s frightening to think they’re working with vulnerable people but it does attract a certain type.

Anyway there are plenty of good practitioners out there doing it for the right reasons.

Best of luck with your training 👍.

@cansu I agree that the things I listed that impacted my DD are the 'job' of the schools, but there is no getting away from the fact they weren't helpful for my DD. It is the 'one size fits all' model which actually doesn't fit at the edges. With current funding and guidance it isn't the school's fault, their hands are tied.

@TeenDivided I have just started teaching GCSE this year (having mostly only taught 6th form courses in my subject before) and have been horrified by the difficulty of the course. Also it overlaps with the A-level in the same subject so quite what the point is of putting 14 year olds through it is, I am not sure. Most are simply not mature enough for the material. And their reading comprehension is nothing like good enough.

Obviously I am doing my best but the GCSE I took in the subject back in the late 80s I remember as much more accessible and practical.

Michael Gove has much to answer for!!

The problem with the new reformed GCSEs is there are no 'easy' options any more. Even something like food tech has so much theory.

With regards to my comments earlier on the thread, I work as part of an Integrated Care System www.england.nhs.uk/integratedcare/what-is-integrated-care/ and each school has signed an agreement to facilitate delivery of sessions.

No school needs to conduct an individual DBS as I am already checked by my organisation. I am responsible for communicating with clients and parents and sending session reminders.

School staff can refer their students to us for in-person counselling sessions at school at no cost to them, bar the admin time of making a room booking and collecting a student only if they have failed to arrive at their session. This costs significantly less than employing a school counsellor so is of significant benefit to the school.

Some schools are absolutely excellent facilitators, but unfortunately some have a culture where my time isn’t valued (nor is the cost to the tax payer who is funding me to be there) and the student does not get the support they so desperately need.

I hope this adds some perspective to this thread.

This has just popped up for me!
Not able to access this but might be helpful to some of you. A programme of help rather than a policies course!

https://uclpsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SVcNCBCq6xdfe0KQm?fbclid=IwAR3ETbXUj2MV9DmCnK1wYIa7dp9fSL9lrkOM8uiJk77Pp0S33vNERPBkf-oaemmAaoftao4mY5CH7iq5NY9anC9nJJSLEfJThN6am1KIpVIprugcZB5MzmY-0Hc6eyAQfK42fSxZwf4Ir8CCg2xXrl3LwRGqiZ-voZEfrPsISHzRLeNHWCQ8jS_OtodggijqXM

@TeenDivided have you seen this SN jungle article about the plans for post 16 qualifications up to level 2? The difficulty with inappropriate courses for pupils is only going to get worse if the plans go ahead.

I guess it goes hand in hand with messing up BTECs.

The problem is that schools are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Some parents (especially those who have children with additional needs) want a caring, inclusive, pupil centred approach. They will complain that the rules are detrimental to their child.

Ofsted want the data, the exam results, how students are doing in Maths and English, and a stricter behaviour policy.

Other parents (especially those with high achievers) want pupils to be pushed, have high expectations, and have low tolerance for difficult behaviour because it impacts their child.

Just look at the all threads on MN where parents only want the best school for their DCs and complain about their local schools, picking apart the exam grades. They aren’t interested in how many children the school has clothed or fed, or supported through a MH crisis.
And then of course the fewer students the school attracts, the less funding they get.

Schools can’t win.

You're not wrong, @Morticiathegreat

@gorkaandhelenforthewin. Thank you for that. I do refer some students to this service but recently I have had someone rejected for support because 'they're with CAMHS', meaning, they've been on a waiting list for over 18 months so they're not going to offer anything in the meantime. It might be because if someone's on the waiting list for CAMHS it means their mental health issues are deemed severe enough, but integrated services refusing the young person means that the case bounces back to school, and a non qualified admin random from the pastoral team gets assigned to support them. This can take months if not years and in the meantime parents are either clueless that the support is not appropriate, or don't care as long as it's off their hands.

I absolutely agree that schools should be facilitating student's access to mental health services rather than hindering this and relying on unqualified support.