The RISE team has been helping school children with their mental health and wellbeing since 2019, when 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.
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.
What can the RISE team help with?
RISE focus is low intensity support for children and young people coping with mild to moderate mental health needs. Our Education Mental Health Practitioners are able to deliver sessions to address many common themes that children & young people present. Though, there are times where this is not possible where issues are more complex, the table below provides indication of the types of mental health themes the RISE team will support and where more specialised support will be required.
| We can help with key presenting low intensity issues such as: | Our partners can support with more specialist support such as: |
| – Anxiety – Low mood – Sleep issues – Friendships – Exam stress – Relationships – Family breakdown – Feeling out of control – Self-harm – Disordered eating | – Suicide ideation – Gender fluidity – Serious self-harm – Psychosis – Making any diagnosis – Eating disorders |
If the school is part of the MHST programme the service manager will arrange to meet with them to discuss what the school requires, they will allocate a date once a EMHP is available. If there are any urgent needs we hold a limited number of 1:1 sessions, though the CYP must meet the criteria of low intensity mental health support.
Schools outside of MHST programme can make contact with RISE through the email address below, and if there is capacity they will liaise with the school to identify their need and whether RISE are able to support.
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.