Mental Health Support Teams in Schools (MHSTs)

Schools play an important role in supporting the wellbeing of children and young people at a time when they are experiencing lots of physical, emotional and social changes.  The introduction of Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) working within schools is a new approach to provide an additional source of support to families.

We have been lucky to be awarded three sites for the MHST Pilots by NHS England which are North Dorset, Weymouth & Portland and Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole as part of an initial two year project.

MHSTs are working with a small number of schools across these three areas to tackle the challenges children and young people experience, by helping them to feel more resilient, arming them with techniques to look after themselves and strategies to help them cope better with life’s ups and downs. This includes support for things like mild-moderate anxiety or worries, exam stress and friendship issues through low intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LI-CBT), counselling sessions, themed group work or information workshops.

The teams will also support parents and teachers with information, advice and guidance about how best to help children and young people who are experiencing difficulties.

There are three main ways children and young people can access support from the MHST:

• When a school staff member notices a child or young person is struggling with day-to-day worries
• When a parent informs a school staff member about their concerns
• When a young person asks for support for themselves.

We hope that following the two years, we will be able to expand into more schools within each area, so we apologise if your school is not involved at this current time.