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WQ.80/2020
WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION BY DEPUTY K.G. PAMPLIN OF ST. SAVIOUR
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 25th FEBRUARY 2020
Question
Will the Minister provide an update on any developments made to the mental health support and education provided professionally within the Island's secondary schools and higher education establishments since her response to Written Question 217/2019?
Answer
Developments made since the answer was provided to Written Question 217/2019 in May 2019 include:
The Educational Psychology Team, Social and Emotional Mental Health Team and Skills Jersey have now attended significant training in Attachment Based Mentoring and this training offer will be made available to any professional working with children and young people shortly.
The Educational Psychology Team also offer face to face and consultation for parents/carers through weekly consultation lines and 6 weekly Parentscope meetings across island. Work is currently underway to link the established Parentscope project with The Closer To Home initiative, to offer community based drop ins for families, and March introduces the first pilot of this kind offered from Communicare in St Brelade. Additionally, exploration is currently underway to consider rebranding and relaunching Parentscope to encourage a greater community focus and enable access to young people also.
Within the academic year 2019 – 2020 all secondary school students have been offered Emotional First Aid workshops, run by the Primary Mental Health Team, involving small group work to explore looking after mental health and well-being.
A pilot project at Hautlieu School has also begun, developing study skills and mindfulness with students, with a particular focus on supporting one's self during exam times. This project is co-delivered by the Primary Mental Health and Educational Psychology Teams and will be offered to all schools once perfected.
The La Passerelle Team, supporting secondary students with declining school attendance due to heightened levels of anxiety, has also been created and began working with its first students in January 2020. The team has the capacity to work with up to 15 students and is currently supporting 10 at their base at The Bridge. The core aim is to offer early intervention in an effort to support full time return to mainstream education by offering enhanced support regarding mental health and well-being management. Due to several students who are currently in receipt of support being in Year 11, the La Passerelle Team are currently adapting their service offer to host formal exams for these students also.
A project team led by the Group Director, Children, Young People, Education and Skills (CYPES) and the Operations Director, Health and Community Services (HCS) delivered the safe and effective transfer of CAMHS, Family Care Co-Ordination and the Community Short Breaks service from the operational management of HCS to CYPES in October 2019. The governance of these services is jointly managed across both departments through the Joint Governance and Oversight Group (GOG). A new interim CAMHS Manager is in post, their focus is on stabilising the current offer, developing the operational policies and improving the pathways between services such as schools and colleges that support children and young people and the CAMHS service.
Following this successful transition, work commenced in November 2019 to redesign children and young people's emotional wellbeing and mental health services, focusing on integrating the pathways with other children and family services and the Right Help Right Time model. The redesign is using a commissioning based approach with co-production at its heart- involving and coproducing services with key stakeholders such as children and young people, parents and carers and voluntary, private and government departments. The redesign is currently just completing the analysing phase which has included:
• Mapping the services that support children and young people's emotional wellbeing and mental health
• 1:1 interviews with key managers discussing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of current services and pathways
• Two workshops, skills audit and diary with the CAMHS team
• Three focus groups with parents and carers
• Questionnaires for parent/carers (c.300), children (c.58) and professionals (c.60)
• Needs assessment and data analysis
• International best practice review
The next phase of the commissioning cycle is the planning phase. Three multi-agency workshops which include schools and colleges are planned for the 25th February, 17th March and the 2nd April. These are solution focused events, which will develop the commissioning strategy, business cases and service design. The workshops are focusing on five key priority areas developed from the analyses to date, these include:
• Perinatal and Early Years
• Community Approaches to Prevention & Early Intervention this includes improving the pathways between school/college and CAMHS
• Crisis and Urgent Care Provision
• Specialist Services - Neurodevelopmental & Paediatric Psychology
• Specialist Services – Trauma
Service specifications detailing new services and pathways will be developed by June 2020, with new service models being implemented from the second half of the year.