A new team is now helping school children with their mental health and wellbeing, after the CCG made a successful bid to the national Trailblazer programme in 2019.
Since then, the RISE team has trained 12 local people as education mental health practitioners (EMHPs), and helped over 600 children in 54 schools in Newcastle and Gateshead.
The team helps young people with a range of issues like difficult relationships, loneliness, school work pressures and coping with change.
The five aims of the Team are to:
- Work closely with the Senior Mental Health Leads in schools to develop models of early intervention on mild to moderate mental health issues, such as exam stress, behavioural difficulties or friendships
- Provide evidence-based interventions for children and young who present with mild to moderate mental health problems in a school or college setting which tend to be outside the scope of traditional NHS services
- Deliver a comprehensive training programme to increase knowledge and understanding of mental health, trauma and implementation of restorative practice, building resilience
- Work with teachers and school staff to identify children and young people with emerging mental health needs, as part of a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing
- Provide appropriate assessment of need, signposting and referral functions to a range of relevant services. This includes referring to specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services to support children and young people who require a more dedicated or intensive intervention.
Linking with school counsellors, nurses, educational psychologists and voluntary organisations, its focus is on supporting pupils with mild to moderate mental health issues, as well as helping pupils with more severe needs to get the right support.
The RISE team also works with other agencies to help young people build emotional awareness and resilience.
One in nine young people aged five to 15 has a mental health condition, and teenagers with a mental disorder are more than two and a half times more likely to have mental health problems in adulthood.
With the RISE team in place, we are in a stronger position to ensure that we support young people when they experience mental health difficulties, with that essential support available when the signs of mental health issues first appear.
Covid can’t stop us!
Faced with the Covid-19 pandemic, the team quickly rose to the challenge, offering a whole range of new options for children needing their support.
Instead of assemblies, group work and one-to-ones in school, the team switched to telephone and online consultations, as well as keeping in touch with parents and schools to monitor the young people’s changing needs.
A new series of ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ videos and other resources are also helping families with children who may have worries.
RISE is supported by The Children’s Society, NHS Newcastle Gateshead Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Northumbria University, as well as Newcastle and Gateshead councils.
The team is aiming to expand and support a wider range of schools in the future.
You can find out more, including a list of schools currently supported by the team, on the RISE website.
If you or a member of your family need support with anxiety or mental health worries, you can contact the team at RISEreferral@childrenssociety.org.uk