Children's Mental Health Support Team
Children's Mental Health Support Team
Many schools across Cornwall are now working with a Mental Health Support Team. Your local team is an NHS service and will help your school to consider their approach to children and young people’s mental health. They also provide additional capacity and support to the help that is already available from existing mental health and wellbeing services.
In Cornwall, the focus of the team is on prevention and early intervention. They are a primary school linked service. The team can also support the transition into secondary school, and we link with our secondary school colleagues as needed.
Depending on the age of the child or young person, we may work either directly with them or with their parents or carers. We also work with school staff and offer support on different levels; with the aim of developing and supporting a whole school approach to promoting mental health.
We can provide individual, or group based short term, low-intensity mental health interventions and support focused on mild to moderate anxiety, low mood and other areas.
Funding was jointly and nationally agreed by the Department for Education and Department for Health for development of mental health support teams to provide extra capacity for early intervention and ongoing help within a school and college setting.
Why is early mental health support important?
Did you know that over 50% of all mental health difficulties will start before the age of 14?
In Cornwall there are many services offering mental health support to families and young people. We aim to get and offer early help. We are not a diagnostic service.
We are not the right service for parents seeking to clarify any diagnosis for conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder.
Our services aim to make a difference by offering support early when possible mental health difficulties may be emerging for children.
There are also a range of online self-help support services available to support young people and families.
How the service works
Our trained practitioners work with primary school aged children or their parent carer. As a school linked service this mainly takes place in the school setting. We will sometimes see people in a family hub or online, especially in the summer holidays.
Our service comprises of:
- education mental health practitioners
- other low intensity cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) practitioners
- support workers
We also work with school staff and offer support on different levels. Our aim is developing and supporting a whole school approach to mental health.
We currently have 6 teams working in schools in:
- Penwith and Isles of Scilly
- Kerrier
- Restormel
- Camel Valley
- Caradon
- upper Tamar
From September 2024, we are due to begin working in the Carrick area.
Referrals
Referrals are only possible through your child’s primary school.
Contact your teacher or mental health lead to jointly consider whether we are the right service to support you.
Information for schools
The team supports children and young people who may be presenting with mild or moderate mental health difficulties. These are described as difficulties that may be affecting day to day life and engagements in school activities.
Mental Health Support Team workshop offer (PDF, 551 KB)
Suitable for Mental Health Support Team help
Common mental health difficulties that may respond to early intervention:
- low mood or mild to moderate depression
- panic disorder and/or agoraphobia
- generalised anxiety disorder or worry
- simple phobia (but not blood, needles or vomit)
- sleep problems
- stress management
- mild behavioural difficulties
Possibly suitable for Mental Health Support Team help
Conditions which may respond to early intervention but require clinical discretion:
- anger difficulties
- low self-esteem
- mild social anxiety disorder
- some compulsive behaviours
- mild health anxiety
- assertiveness or interpersonal challenges (such as with peers)
- self-harm is disclosed but is assessed as linked to low mood but is not assessed as enduring and high risk in nature
- obsessive compulsive disorder (OCB)
Complex and not suitable for Mental Health Support Team help
Significant levels of need or complex conditions which are not suitable for brief early intervention:
- pain management
- PTSD
- bipolar disorder
- psychosis
- personality disorders
- eating disorders
- chronic depression or anxiety
- established health anxiety
- historical or current experience of abuse or violence
- complex interpersonal challenges
- bereavement
- active, enduring and significant self-harm
- relationship problems
Exclusions
There are some difficulties that the team do not work with, because they require more in-depth intervention. These include anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. Refer to the
- Children and Young People’s Eating Disorder Service referrals
- Autism spectrum disorder and/or ADHD assessment: complete the local profiling tool or make an Early Health Hub referral.
Information for parents or carers
Our aim is to build resilience and empower children and young people (and the adults in their lives) to get the help they need, when they need it.
The kind of support we can offer includes:
- help for individuals (normally between 6 and 8 sessions)
- supporting staff to offer emotional wellbeing sessions within a class or to a smaller group of young people
- working closely with an adult who children spend time with, including school staff. a family member or carer
As a team we are trained to use guided self-help resources with children, parents or carers, and to support staff at school to understand more about mental health. We also help schools to develop a whole-school approach to emotional health wellbeing.
Mental health practitioners can help children displaying mild to moderate signs of:
- worry
- low mood
- mild behavioural difficulties
Information for young people
How we can help you
First, we will have a meeting with you and your parent or carer, so you can talk to us about anything that might be worrying you or anything that you’re finding difficult.
After that, we can work out the best plan to help you. We might decide that somebody from our team is the right person to work with you. Or we might ask somebody from another service, like a doctor or a counsellor, to help you, if that’s what’s best for you.
If we think that we are the best people to help you, we will invite you (or your parent or carer) to spend between 6 and 8 sessions working with us.
If we think another professional or service can help and support you better than we can, we’ll put you in touch with them.
Blip’s black cloud
One morning, Blip woke up feeling not quite right. Usually, Blip woke up feeling happy and bright and jumped out of bed… but not today.
Blip was not really sure why. They could not put their finger on what they were feeling, but Blip knew it did not feel very nice.
A couple of weeks later, Blip still was not feeling quite right.
Things that they usually enjoyed, like being with friends, playing games and doing activities, were not fun anymore.
Blip felt like a big black cloud was following them around and making everything gloomy.
Blip had been trying to ignore the big black cloud, by pretending that everything was ok. Smiling and putting on a brave face and keeping their worries and bad feelings inside.
But the cloud kept getting bigger and bigger.
It got so big that Blip began to think it might never go away.
Blip’s teacher, Miss Toot, had noticed that Blip had become quieter and did not seem to be enjoying school or being with friends or doing any of their favourite things anymore…
“Are you okay Blip?” asked Miss Toot.
Blip told Miss Toot about feeling worried and not quite right, and about being followed around by a big black cloud, which actually felt more like a thunderstorm now.
Miss Toot was very kind and understanding. She said that we can all feel under the weather sometimes, but if it lasts for more than a few days we might need a little bit of help to feel better. Miss Toot thought that it would be a good idea for Blip to meet someone from the Mental Health Support Team, to talk things through. Blip agreed.
Soon, Blip met up with Max, a practitioner from the Mental Health Support Team. Max helped Blip to understand what they were feeling and why. Max helped Blip to talk about their worries and find ways to stop them getting too big to cope with (these are called strategies).
By doing this, Max helped Blip to build something called resilience, which means the ability to help yourself feel better after you’ve had a difficult or worrying time. If Blip felt not right quite right in future, the strategies that they had worked on with Max would help Blip cope and make sure the black cloud did not hang around too long or turn into a thunderstorm again.
Max explained to Blip that sharing their feelings and worries with someone else can make them easier to cope with. Max said that feelings of worry, fear and panic can be called anxiety.
It’s normal to feel anxious if you’re in a scary situation, but it can become a problem if you feel worried all the time and that stops you enjoying your life.
So, if you find yourself feeling:
- down, very sad or numb for a long period of time
- low without any obvious reason
- tearful, stressed, hopeless, lonely, angry or empty
- bad about yourself, others or the world
- find it hard to look after yourself or concentrate at school
The good news is that we may have the tools to support you and help you feel better, just like Blip.
