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Brighton and Hove’s integrated approach to supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
Brighton and Hove Council employs a multi-agency, stepped care approach to support children and young people’s mental health. These services are embedded in every secondary school, extend to primary schools and colleges, and offer a range of interventions to support mental health at all levels.
The challenge and approach
Brighton and Hove Council have a multi-agency, stepped care approach to supporting children and young people’s mental health. The school’s wellbeing service has been in place for over eight years with a range of clinicians brought together; art therapists, play therapists, and practitioners who can offer humanistic counselling and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) sitting within the council and embedded within every secondary school whilst also providing interventions at primary school and undertaking work in colleges too. It is funded by the council, NHS and public health.
The school's wellbeing service and the Mental Health Support Teams combine under the umbrella of the Schools Mental Health Service that responds flexibly to the needs of children and young people across the city through a whole school approach. Each primary and secondary school and college is encouraged to take a stepped approach to supporting children and young people. There is the opportunity to respond to young people’s needs through groups, 1:1 or direct links with community CAMHs and mental health providers in the city for those young people with more acute needs. Strong relationships with schools and other partners have been key. This has enabled the school and the practitioners embedded in them to know and understand the children, identifying who may need more support than others.
Lessons learned
A more recent approach being explored by the council is investment in school counselling for children in year 9 in all state-funded schools across Brighton and Hove. This was spearheaded by a local citizens group which encouraged counsellors to make the financial decision to allocate £200,000 to the pilot. This project will start in September 2024 and British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) is going to provide an evaluation of the approach to understand how it is working for children and young people. Brighton and Hove were part of the initial wave of mental health support teams in schools (MHSTs) with 3.5 practitioners across the city, highlighting the need for greater support. The new pilot will add a further four counsellors to support this specific cohort of year 9s.
The schools wellbeing service has over 1200 contacts in each quarter, and very few of these are subsequently referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHs). The team identifies innovative and creative solutions to support children and young people. For example, there was recognition of a high number of referrals coming from children with anxiety in primary schools. After delving into this data, the team identified that many of these children had siblings with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). In response, they set up a group to bring together these children, initially facilitated by a practitioner, with the objective being to be taken on by the school, encouraging sustainability around this offer. The team also focus on what they can do to support families. Some of this is through using space in family hubs and providing links with family support workers. There are 90 minute family sessions where parents are supported to understand their child’s needs and how to respond to them, and group support for families to share their experiences and to develop peer networks which can provide ongoing support.
The service also provides a differentiated, needs led approach to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people, children from migrant or asylum-seeking families. Conversations with these groups has shown the importance of engaging with children and young people and identified blocks to support that the practitioners and managers would not have identified.
The key thing we aim to do and is listen to parents/carers, young people and schools and look at offers that are more responsive and considers early intervention and preventative work to support children and young people with their emotional well-being and mental health.
Looking forward
The pilot for counselling for year 9s will start in September 2024 and run for a year and will be evaluated by BACP. Depending on the success of this pilot, it will impact funding going forward. The rest of the service will continue to have tripartite funding and the team will continue to respond innovatively to the need of children, young people and communities.
The team have worked hard to improve multi-agency working and bringing interventions into environments that will help improve the accessibility to the offer.