FOR

Mental Health Professionals

This website provides information about Work Package 5 of the Green Paper project, which will evaluate the effectiveness of direct support that MHSTs provide in selected areas across England.

What are the criteria for participating in the Green Paper project?

Data collection will be taking place in various regions across England.

We will recruit pupils and parents to participate in this study through the school’s Mental Health Support Team (MHST). A research team member will reach out to MHSTs in the selected regions and meet with the MHST and staff at the school/college during recruitment.

What is the Green Paper?

Background

In 2017, the Departments for Health and Education set out a Green Paper (government consultation) that aimed to improve mental health support for children and young people.

The core proposals were:

    • Encourage every school and college to identify a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health to oversee the school’s approach to mental health and wellbeing.
    • Fund new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs), to provide extra capacity for early mental health intervention and ongoing help in schools. MHSTs will be supervised by NHS mental health staff.
    • Test a 4-week waiting time for access to specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services.

    In 2018, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Implementation Programme was launched to implement the proposals outlined in the Green Paper.

    The programme focuses on improving mental health prevention and early intervention for children and young people in England.

    What does the study involve?

    We will ask pupils who will receive mental health support at school to complete a series of surveys to find out about their mental health and wellbeing. These surveys will include questions about their strengths and difficulties, quality of life, symptoms of anxiety and depression, service use, and socio-demographic information. Additionally, five to eight questions related to their mental health will be completed using the online platform Artemis-A.

    These surveys will be administered three times:

    1. Before the student begins receiving mental health support at school
    2. After the student finishes receiving support
    3. At a follow-up 9 months after the first survey

    Following the surveys, we will also invite pupils, parents, and caregivers to interviews or focus groups to ask them more about their/their child’s experience of receiving support.

    What will I be asked to do?

    If you are working in one of our selected mental health support teams (MHSTs), the lead researcher will be in contact to discuss your schools partaking in the Green Paper project.

    As a main contact of pupils who will be receiving mental health support at school, you will be asked to communicate with these pupils and their parents/carers about the study. Upon agreeing to be contacted, we will provide participant information sheets and consent forms to the pupils and their parents. If they would like to take part in the study, they should return the consent form to you before you commence the mental health support, signed by the pupil (and their parent if the pupil is under 16). We will also provide an introductory video about the study for pupils to watch.

    Pupils will complete the surveys and interview on their own or with their parents, so you will not need to assist with any data collection.

    How will this study benefit me and my client

    This study will benefit MHSTs, children and young people and their parents/carers by determining how effective the support pupils receive from MHSTs is and why. Upon completion of the study, we will present our findings to you to inform MHSTs about what is working well for children and young people, and to create suggestions for improvement, informed by those with lived experience.  As a result, this study will help MHSTs provide increasingly beneficial mental health support for young people.