Schools should be more proactive regarding children's mental health

[Foreverautumnagain]

I'm aware of so many school age kids suffering knife attacks, bullying and extreme stress at school that result in sometimes fatal reactions as these kids don't know where to turn for support and cannot stop the harmful behaviour.

My child showed me a video of a 14 year old girl getting severely beaten at school by 4 other girls while a teacher walked past and totally ignored it! There are many reports of similar attacks and some as harmful if less extreme - I'm sure most parents could give examples!

There are far more youngsters self-harming, avoiding school, turning to drugs and alcohol and as parents we're being told the schools can't do anything!! We send our kids into situations which must feel like torture to them and we tell them they have to go there!! It's beyond belief how ruthless school life is these days - surely schools have a massive responsibility to make the environment safe, to identify and help those who are self-harming or expressing s**cidal thoughts??

I appreciated funds are limited but Government should now step up and accept there's a problem. They need to fund appropriate support and, if necessary, security staff at schools.

Nowhere did I suggest that teachers took on the extra load. It should involve specialists in mental health issues and better security arangements to make the environment safer.

Your thread title literally says schools need to be more proactive around children's mental health, but who do you think takes on the extra load if not school staff? Where are these specialists going to come from and who will be paying for them? There is a national shortage of Educational Psychologists, and we cannot afford the number of EP hours we need to get evidence for EHCP's as it is. CAMHS in my area keep having to repeatedly re-advertise vacancies for Mental Health Nurses and therapists, no one wants the job and I can't say I blame them. Even if there were loads of Mental health specialists queueing up to work in schools, we don't have the budget to pay for them.

I agree 100% that schools have a duty to promote positive mental health and every school I've worked in has placed a high level of importance on children's emotional wellbeing, as they should. But what I object to is the idea that schools should be providing a specialist mental health service because the agencies who are actually commissioned to provide these services can't meet demand. Parents tell me all the time that they've taken their child to the GP with serious Mental Health concerns and been told there's "no point" referring to CAMHS as the waiting lists are too long and the child needs help now so they should "ask the school what they can do to support". Social workers ask me in meetings "what is the school doing to support this child with their mental health?" when they know full well that this child's mental health is poor because they are living in a chaotic, volatile and unsafe environment.

We do our best, and will continue to do so, but it's never enough and I'm sick and tired of schools being expected to fix all the problems in society.

My child is in weekly therapy currently for PTSD which has triggered other issues.

Its quite a complex need she has, but one of her "issues" is the high level of perfectionism that she is striving towards every day therefor her school do see small signs of her anxietys come through but nothing like what shes experiencing in her head daily and at home.

Its not the schools responsability to provide therapy for my child, I do think schools should play a supporting role and follow our lead which our school have.

My expectations of school is to teach my children the ciriculam - not how to bursh their teeth, toilet train them or provide mental health care.

People are now becoming far too reliant on schools to parent their children and that is the real issue. Parents need to be far more proactive in obtaining mental health resources through therapy, groups, charities.

I'm not the parent. I know parents who are at their wits end trying to support their children while holding down full time jobs to pay the bills. They are getting lip service from the school with the head of year, in one instance, telling them to let the kids sort it out themselves. What a cop out!! It's been going on for months and their child is completely isolated because of 1 troublemaker inventing tales about the victim's home life and things they say they have said about other kids. Their property has been damaged and they've had poo smeared on their school blazer.