Information for school staff

The role of the school, supporting the whole school approach.

The role of the school

All Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) WSA activities and interventions rely on a collaborative working approach for them to be effective for all stakeholders, with the school and service working together to plan and deliver our offer so that change and impact can be seen for all by all.

It is important that the young person who is referred for our 1:1 offer acknowledges they want support and are motivated to talk and work on this alongside a practitioner. Their engagement is key to the support being successful.

The senior mental health lead should discuss this with the child or young person, explaining the role of the MHST and the practitioners who will be working with them before making a referral to the MHST Thought-Full.

If the child or young person (and their parent or carer dependent on age) agrees, the senior mental health lead will need to complete the ‘request for support form’.

During the intervention, children and young people explore and are taught new skills which they practise to help support behaviours, feelings, and thoughts they wish to change. It is important that young people practice these new techniques in between sessions for them to be effective. With permission the practitioner will share what new skills are being learnt so that settings and staff can help to reinforce the work in school.

Supporting the whole school approach

Thought-Full can work with you to support you as a school to strengthen your whole school approach to mental health and emotional wellbeing. This could involve:

  • a whole school approach to emotional wellbeing and mental health reflective tool - the tool is designed to be meaningful and easy to use to help you to identify what is already working well in school and areas that you would like to develop or enhance
  • training and development for all school/college staff, in areas of mental health and wellbeing emotional
  • promoting staff wellbeing – we offer a range of activities for schools including staff wellbeing sessions for staff, senior leadership team and governors, we can support with the setting up of working groups and identifying resources and signposting
  • working with parents or carers, for example, psychoeducational workshops, coffee mornings and drop in sessions including parent and open evenings
  • working with children and young people, psychoeducational workshops, assemblies or themed days linked to your curriculum offer
  • student-led approaches and pupil voice, such as peer mentoring, co-production of resources and policies
  • creating a safe and supportive ethos and environment in schools which respects diversity and inclusion, including supporting schools to support LGBTQ+ and BAME pupils
  • promoting quality assured resources around mental health and wellbeing
  • exploring the early signs of EBSA as in early intervention support service

Further information

  • Confidentiality is an important part of building trust between a child / young person and their allocated practitioner from the MHST. What we discuss within these sessions stays with the MHST and is not shared with the school unless permission is given by the child/parent.

    However, if there is a current risk or safeguarding concern, this will be shared directly with the school safeguarding lead. 

  • Some of our practitioners are currenting training at the University of Sussex. The sessions are recorded so that the University and supervisor can support their training.

    These may be used within supervision sessions with a supervisor in order to reflect on practice and support future learning. Recordings are kept confidential. Consent is always requested before any session is recorded.

  • We are an all year round service, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (excluding public holidays).

    Practitioners can still meet with young people over school holiday periods using video technology and/or phone calls as well as in person.

  • CBT is an evidenced based intervention effective in helping children and young people to cope with, and manage the difficulties they are experiencing.

    It is a psychological therapy that is based on the concept that emotional issues are caused and kept going by unhelpful patterns of thoughts and behaviours.

    CBT focuses on a thoughts, feelings and behaviours cycle.  It helps identify these unhelpful cycles of thinking and behaving, so that with help, a child or young person can build a more helpful belief and improve their problem solving skills which will then reduce emotional difficulties. 

    CBT interventions may include:

    Graded exposure

    Our fears are maintained by repeatedly avoiding it so that when we do face it the feeling of anxiety is overwhelming. In graded exposure we learn to approach our fear step by step, learning that our anxiety will come down naturally when we stay in that situation and don’t avoid.

    This approach is suitable for fears, phobias and avoidance.  which aims to reduce phobias, fear and anxiety.

    Cognitive restructuring

    Our anxious or negative thoughts can lead to feelings of anxiety which leads us to avoid the situation in which the thoughts arose or do something to manage the negative thoughts. This means we rarely challenge these thoughts and the accuracy of them.

    Cognitive Restructuring helps us to notice our thoughts and possible unhelpful thinking patterns, it then teaches us to look at the evidence for our thoughts and considering an alternative perspective.

    We then encourage children and young people to test our their alternative thoughts in the situations that make then anxious.

    Behavioural activation

    When we feel low in mood, we feel less motivated to take part in the things we enjoy and we get less out of life which leads us to feel lower in mood.

    Behavioural Activation helps us to notice this pattern and through planning our activities we start to increase activities that we value and give us pleasure which leads to an improvement in mood.

    Low mood really impacts on motivation so this takes time to practice and notice how activity influences our mood.

    Parent guided intervention

    We involve parents in all our interventions (where appropriate) even if we are working 1:1 with a child. We do offer specific interventions which involve working directly with the parent.

    It is important that the child is aware we are working with the parent and is consenting to the parent making some changes to help them. We can offer a behavioural programme to support parents where children are displaying common behavioural difficulties.

    We also offer a parent-led intervention which helps parents to support their children who are experiencing anxiety and which adopts similar approaches to our interventions above.

    Worry management

    We all experience worries, but sometimes we can get stuck in a cycle of worry which stops us from being able to get on with life.

    Worry management helps to spot when we are worrying and implement a worry time to control the time we spend worrying. We then look at different types of worry and how to deal with them. 

  • We offer up to 10 sessions, which may be delivered either face to face or virtually.  Generally, sessions take place in school hours, and are usually the duration of a school lesson.

    Sessions are delivered on a 1:1 basis, between the MHST worker and  the child or young person (with parent/carer when appropriate). In between sessions, children and young people are given home practice tasks which aim to get them to start practicing the new strategies they are learning in the session and apply them to their everyday lives.

    Interventions delivered rely on a collaborative, goals-based approach so it is important that the young person/parent is motivated to talk about, and work on difficulties they are experiencing.