In recent years, the number of children and young people experiencing challenges with their mental health has increased significantly. For many, including their families, seeking mental health support can be complex. In 2022-23, the Children’s Commissioner reported that 8% of the 11.9 million children in England were referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), with 28% still waiting for support and almost 4 in 10 (39%) having their referral closed before receiving support. The delay in supporting children’s and young people’s mental health not only presents challenges for their wellbeing, but it leaves parents, carers, teachers and social workers providing essential support in the first instance.
Considering these challenges, the Government has committed to placing a mental health professional in every school; a policy platformed in Labour’s manifesto last year, at a cost of £175 million in the first year. It is expected this policy will build upon the existing provision of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in education settings, following the 2017 Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision and recent calls for a faster rollout of MHSTs across these settings.
MHSTs are specialised teams established to provide mental health support in educational settings, such as schools and colleges, offering early intervention for students experiencing mild to moderate mental health issues, providing training for school staff to help them support students' mental health and to act as a link between schools and local mental health services, ensuring students receive the appropriate care and onward referral if required.
MHSTs aim to reduce waiting times for mental health treatment and provide timely support to students, contributing to better mental
health outcomes, leading to improved school attendance and attainment. For example, in 2023 13% of children and young people who
entered treatment were referred to MHSTs.
Alongside the creation of MHST’s a new role was developed – Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) – who are trained to
deliver evidence-based interventions and assess and support children and young people with mild-to-moderate anxiety, behavioural
difficulties and other common mental health difficulties. They aim to support children and their parents within the MHST and
support the delivery of school-wide interventions, with evidence-based parenting programmes falling within the remit of EMHP’s training and delivery.
Within many MHSTs, a range of Triple P programmes are implemented across various delivery sites, supported by flexible delivery models to ensure children, young people and their families receive the support they need. These programmes seek to address a range of issues including mild-to-moderate anxiety, undiagnosed special education needs (SEN), and behavioural challenges, contributing to wellbeing, attainment and attendance within education settings. Triple P provides evidence-based parenting programmes that allow MHSTs to offer flexible and effective evidence-based parenting programmes at a time and place most suited to parents.
Working across Derby and Derbyshire, Compass Changing Lives is making a positive impact through providing Fear-Less Triple P, a parenting programme specifically tailored to support children with anxiety. Compass’ MHST delivery is managed by a Specialist Team, including a dedicated Family Practitioner and offered 1:1 or in a group format over 6 sessions, or as a parent self-directed digital intervention, Fear-Less Triple Online.
Fear-Less Triple P supports children and young people with emotional avoidance and is delivered across primary and secondary school settings. For one young person who regularly experienced a sense of overwhelm, anxiety and difficulty managing emotions, Fear-Less Triple P Online provided a flexible intervention for their parent to work through modules at their own pace with monthly check-ins from the Families Practitioner. The parent was extremely positive about the impact of the programme and said they felt far more confident to action the relevant strategies and better understand their child’s situation as a result.
Delivered in Merseyside, Alder Hey Hospital Trust supports the families of children and young people with various conduct disorders and behavioural challenges. Teen Triple P is delivered in schools to parents of secondary aged pupils as group sessions, with each session being led by trained and accredited practitioners as part of their MHST responsibilities.
The programme supports parents to set their own goals, learn ways to encourage positive behaviour, and teach their teens new skills including problem solving, conflict resolution, and self-regulation. Following recent delivery, a service manager reported that the parents who they supported achieved very positive changes at home and thrived on the programme.
Teen Triple P (secondary) and Triple P (primary) programmes can both be delivered 1:1 or in group formats and are both available as parent self-directed online versions too.
In Greater Manchester, Triple P is delivered by Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust to support children, young people and their families to navigate SEND challenges. In Bury, Pennine Care’s MHST practitioners are trained to deliver Stepping Stone Triple P in the Borough’s Special School, a programme for parents of children with intellectual and physical disabilities and disruptive behaviour. Stepping Stones Triple can be delivered 1:1 or in group formats suitable for up to age 12 and will also be available as a parent self-directed online version from Spring 2025.
Given Labour’s commitment to improve mental health support in schools MHSTs play in invaluable role in ensuring children and young people have access to timely mental health support. Yet they are not without challenges, offering opportunities for development.
Firstly, whilst this case study highlights some great examples, few MHSTs have fully realised the benefits evidence-based parenting programmes. This was highlighted by the a recent London School of Economics ‘Value for Money’ study , where Labour Peer Lord Layard stated that parenting programmes “are the best established and researched form of treatment for childhood mental health problems”.
Secondly, MHSTs report that the EMHP role is often seen as a short-term step in career development and therefore experience a higher turnover of staff than other areas of mental health care. This impacts on service delivery and capacity. With added pressure on the work of senior staff through navigating recruitment, training and knowledge-building for junior EMHPs, more is needed to ensure consistency, flexibility and efficiency in mental health support for children and young people in educational settings.
The flexibility of Triple P’s self-directed online delivery programmes offers unique opportunities for MHSTs by ensuring parents can access high quality, evidence-based support whenever and wherever suits them, less affected by staff turnover and attrition. This also frees up the capacity of practitioners to support those who need additional help or would prefer to access a practitioner-delivered parenting programme.
By working in partnership with MHSTs, Triple P is excited to continue to develop service models that support children, young people and their families to access the right support and ensure they remain in education. With the number of children and young people seeking support for their mental health, the missed opportunity to realise the full benefits of parenting programmes, and MHSTs experiencing challenges with turnover of staff, a focus on adopting flexible offers of parenting support that maximise practitioner and online delivery models have huge potential to ensure educational settings can continue to support children, young people and parents to thrive and get the education they deserve.
To find out more about how Triple P support mental health in schools, please contact us.