What's a normal level of mental health support in secondary school

[crankysaurus]

Is it fuck all? Am I kidding myself to think there should be something?

Ds in y11, SEN register but no ehcp, mainstream school. Has been struggling mentally with the topics covered in one of the classes, on top of the stress from the return to school, disruptive pupil behaviour and the workload, but receives no support. I honestly don't know how much is due to teachers being tied up with Covid and how much is school just not being very good at it all. Any reasonable requests for help (on his behalf as he's not good at asking) seem to go into a black hole with no response.

Do you have a senco? Have you called them? What do you want them to do? I find it helps if you both have an idea of what you’d like to happen and to ask for that specifically as requesting for ‘support‘ in general can be too vague.

I agree with the above. Our school has mentors and a counsellor that could work with a student like your ds.

We have form tutors who'll keep an eye for general pastoral things and then a team of mentors. The mentors are usually oversubscribed, but as try to get people seen.
Speak to the SENCo and if that doesn't work then form tutor can be a good person to signpost further.

Ds who is autistic (SEN support, no EHCP) had some one to one mentoring with a TA in year 11, also some counselling organised by the school. Not sure how much would be available at the moment because of Covid.

Unfortunately none of it helped and he is now being seen by CAMHS.