Each of York’s six geographical clusters of schools will now have a dedicated School Wellbeing Worker who will build on the very successful pilot undertaken in 2015/16, and whose results helped secure funding from the national Children’s Mental Health Transformation Programme, ‘Futures in Mind’.
While the pilot project involved three secondary and 17 primary schools, this next stage will involve all York’s schools. Funded by City of York Council (CYC), the schools and the Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the pilot introduced a new form of partnership working between the council, the city’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and schools, in order to strengthen the emotional and mental health support arrangements for children and young people in school settings.
Although the health and wellbeing of children in York is known to be generally better than England’s average, the CAMHS Executive recognises the importance of giving high quality advice and support as soon as concerns emerge. This exciting project will ensure support is available from confident and capable professionals within the school community.
The School Wellbeing Workers will provide additional mental health capacity and expertise to local authority and academy schools across the city. They will focus on providing training, offering support and advice to pastoral staff, and delivering individual and group work to children and young people. This regular, proactive and consistent mental health resource which is based in schools, works alongside school staff with pastoral responsibility, to increase their confidence and competence as part of a co-ordinated and effective early response to children and young people’s mental health issues and concerns. The new team will also work with the city’s Primary Mental Health Workers and York Educational Psychology Service.
Feedback from young people involved in the pilot included: “I feel like I can share my feelings more, I know that I can talk to people. We have talked about solutions, it makes me feel like I can open up to everyone, it makes me want to come to school far more, it has improved my mood, it has made my self esteem go up and makes me want to get up in the morning.”
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Figures released by the Office for National Statistics have shown a 31 per cent fall in the number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance in York in the past twelve months.
A partnership of City of York Council, the Vale of York CCG and York schools has agreed funding to roll out a pilot project to further improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people across the whole city.