Written evidence from Joseph Krasinski (CMH0194)

I am a Future in Mind Leeds consultant for Leeds Clinical Commissioning Groups and Leeds Local Authority. I have a joint role leading on schools prevention and early intervention of Social, emotional and mental health issues. I jointly wrote the Leeds TaMHS bid with Leeds CCGs in 2007 and have managed it since establishing an effective, sustained multi professional early intervention model in Leeds with a prevention element of whole school practice. Having worked in the Health and Wellbeing Service I have worked alongside Healthy Schools colleagues in promoting a whole school approach. We are probably the only Local Authority to sustain a Healthy Schools team and a TaMHS project.

I now work within the framework of the Future in Mind Leeds strategy which looks at and works on all part of the system as part of MindMate

I have been rewarded by the DfE with a Royal Garden Party invitation for my services to education.

Apologies for the rushed submission, I was only made aware of it at 17:30 on 20 1 2017.

Executive Summary

• There is much evidence of effective approaches in school and the impact on school attainment and life.
• Some need modernising such as the curriculum.
• Health and education must work effectively together in a restorative approach. Schools cannot be expected to lead this on their own, nor must a health approach be implemented.
• There is good practice available for copying and amending with support. Recommendation: Make some LAs/ CCGs leading partners where success is proven.
• No reinvention is needed. ‘Forgetting’ what previous governments have done only to re visit in similar ways is unhelpful. Recommendation: Look again, without political bias, at what works. The current CAMHS schools pilot is old ground on a smaller scale compared to TaMHS.
• Good schools will probably do it, but have little understanding of evidence based approaches.
• Relationships are everything. Between school staff and pupils, between fiends, in families and between professionals ands services.
• Recommendation All school staff  need training in understanding relatioships, the inpac it has as well as basic mental health training.
• The lack of statutory PSHE and mental health lessons and the school inspection framework are not fit for purpose for this area. Recommendation: Make PSHE statutory with a mental health curriculum.
• Specific, protected funding is required if you want all schools to prevent and intervene early. Recommendation: Fund this area properly. Keep the Future in Mind promises made by the coalition government for additional funding. This lack of funding is undoing all our hard work. Mental health is widely reported as being underfunded.

1. Schools have a clearly mandated role to promote and support the Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs of their pupils. This comes from statutory duties:

• To promote children and young people’s wellbeing and deliver the SEMH Local Offer (Children and Families Act 2004, Local Offer regulations). In Leeds this clearly describes the school and targeted cluster offer, and the regulations explicitly reference the requirement for schools to support SEMH needs in line with the offer set out by the local authority.
• Keeping children safe (Working together to safeguard children and Keeping children safe in education)

2. Various non statutory guidance documents demonstrate the links between SEMH skills and attainment and what schools could do. This includes The Impact of Pupil Behaviour and Wellbeing on Educational Outcomes (Public Health), Counselling in schools: a blueprint for the future (DfE) and Mental health and behaviour in schools (DfE)
3. Therefore school spend on providing a universal and targeted offer for SEMH prevention and early intervention makes a clear contribution to improving educational outcomes for more vulnerable pupils.
4. In Leeds an effective, joined up model attracts joint commissioning spend from the CCGs and enables quicker, more effective support “early in the life of the problem” and movement through the system.
5. Nationally and internationally there have been proven evaluated links between emotional literacy (SEAL) curriculum, whole school approaches to SEMH, evidence based behaviour management (e.g. Webster Stratton) , targeted in school programmes (e.g. Silver SEAL, Second Steps) and improved social, emotional and mental health. Relationships feature strongly in all of these, between staff, between staff and pupils, between pupils and in families. This should be taught and modelled. There is a well constructed evidence base which gives an overview of the strongest evidence from research studies of what works in schools. (Using the evidence to inform your approach: a practical guide for headteachers and commissioners)

6. In recent years programmes such as TaMHS have demonstrated the evidence based, effective work that can be put in place in schools if following an effective model and with ongoing funding. Charities such as The Place2be can prove the impact of their work in schools for both educational outcomes and invest to save models for the public purses.
7. In Leeds, where most other authorities did not continue, we have maintained our TaMHS pilot work into and ongoing city wide model of prevention (https://mindmatechampions.org.uk/) and early intervention. This has been due to proving outcomes to funders, joint working across education and health, delegating commissioning from a range of providers down to a school cluster level, clear guidance, clear outcome data expectations and sticking to evidence based models of the whole school approach outlined in TaMHS. Many features of this work are influencing a joint health and local authority Future in Mind Leeds strategy aiming for common approaches city wide in assessment, evidence based support and easy access to multi professional teams with specialist mental health support. We believe this joint approach to be unique in the UK.
8. Schools can access specialist mental health support for counselling, consultations, family support, family systemic work within a multi professional team through their clusters. This is co commissioned with the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The type of service is decided on and commissioned locally with guidance and an approved list of providers. Short video here

9. In their prevention work schools have a vital role in educating their pupils about mental health through their curriculum. Pupils and families say they want this but due to the lack of statutory status of PSHE it is a lottery that it is taught. We are writing our own modern emotional literacy and mental health curriculum that fits into the PSHE curriculum as part of our prevention offer. Schools request it, are unaware even that the PSHE association has written some lessons (too limited in our opinion) but not all will teach it.
10. The Ofsted framework does not inspect this area robustly. Multi professional teams would make a significant difference.