This project explores how mental health support is being implemented in schools and colleges and what the impacts are for children, young people and their families.
The project team is a collaboration between LSHTM and the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge.
"Education settings are important sites for mental health promotion and early intervention. Children and Young People spend more time in school than any other place outside their home, and parents concerned about their child’s mental health turn to teachers for help and advice more often than any other professional group. (Newlove-Delgado et al, 2015)."
Background: What is 'the Programme'?
The Children and Young People’s (CYP) Mental Health Provision Green Paper Programme is an ambitious implementation programme creating mental health support teams (MHSTs) to provide extra capacity for early intervention and work with school/college staff to promote emotional wellbeing across their individual education setting; and funding training to senior mental health leads in schools/colleges to support them in their role.
The MHSTs were designed to have three core functions:
- To provide direct support through evidence-based interventions (e.g., low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy) to individual children and young people with ‘mild to moderate’ mental health problems and/or their parents/carers.
- To support schools and colleges with their whole-school/college approach to mental health and wellbeing.
- To work with education staff and liaise with external specialist mental health services to help children and young people to get the right support and stay in education.
Watch Samantha's Story, a video from Mental Health Support Teams Hull.
Aims and objectives
The specific objectives for this project are to:
- Update the Programme’s theory of change as a framework for the evaluation, and identify and/or develop measures to assess Programme impacts and outcomes;
- Understand service models and ways of working and assess the extent of any learning across sites and over time;
- Assess the relationship between Programme workforce, user outcomes and sustainability;
- Compare activity, user experiences, user outcomes and costs between sites and for different CYP sub-groups;
- Explore whether and how the Programme, and MHSTs specifically, are contributing to the development of whole school/college approaches;
- Identify scope for improvement of Programme delivery to improve effectiveness and cost-effectiveness; and
- Advise how CYP outcome data beyond June 2025 should be collected and analysed at low cost.
The project team brings together a range of expertise, from child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health promotion to health services research, economics and policy evaluation.
Co-Principal Investigators
- Dr Jo Ellins (Birmingham)
- Professor Nicholas Mays (LSHTM)
Co-Investigators
- Dr Jo Anderson (Cambridge)
- Dr Anne-Marie Burn (Cambridge)
- Dr Sarah-Jane Fenton (Birmingham)
- Professor Tamsin Ford (Cambridge)
- Dr Gemma McKenna (Birmingham)
- Dr Stephen O’Neill (LSHTM)
- Dr David Lugo Palacios (LSHTM)
- Dr Colette Soan (Birmingham)
Researchers
- Aslihan Baser (Cambridge)
- Ellie Moore (Birmingham)
- Dr Jessica Mundy (LSHTM)
- Dr Ariadna Albajara Saenz (Cambridge)
Project Manager
- CJ Iliopoulos (LSHTM)
Administrative Assistant
- Narmin Ismayilova (Birmingham)
LSHTM and the University of Birmingham worked on the early evaluation of this Programme, following the ‘Trailblazer’ areas that were piloting the new approaches to supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
More information on the early evaluation can be found on the following sites:
- Empowering Young Minds: Mental Health Trailblazer Programme
- Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer Programme
The reports from the Early Evaluation of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer Programme are available:
- Interim report (pdf)
- Interim report – technical appendix (pdf)
- Final report (pdf)
Animation video:
Authentic collaboration with children, young people and parents/carers will underpin and guide our approach to this study.
The University of Birmingham Institute for Mental Health Youth Advisory Group (YAG) has been involved throughout the early evaluation: from its inception (sharing what they would like the evaluation to focus on) and, as the work developed, training as co-researchers and assisting in co-producing the focus groups with children and young people. Building on and continuing this involvement, we will recruit a new children and young people advisory group (using the YAG, which has broadened its scope by partnering with mental health research charity McPin to involve younger school age members), as well as a parent/carer advisory group.
These advisory groups will contribute throughout. They will: advise on the design and delivery of data collection, including the selection and/or development of tools to assess children, young people and parent/carer experiences and outcomes; co-design and cofacilitate the children and young people’s focus groups and support data analysis and writing (YAG members); and provide advice on the best ways to frame and disseminate the research findings to, and co-create appropriate recruitment and dissemination materials for, children, young people and families.
The findings from surveys of schools and colleges and Mental Health Support Teams (2024) report presents the findings of the first package of research of the evaluation - a survey of education staff in schools and colleges who work with an MHST, and a survey of individuals involved in the delivery of MHSTs.
The aims of the two surveys were to understand how the programme is being implemented nationally, successes and challenges, and impacts for children and young people, their parents or carers, education settings, and local systems of mental health provision.