Archway Wellbeing
Mental Wellbeing – Trailblazer School
We work with Gloucestershire Healthy Living and Learning (GHLL)to enable us to support children and young people to make positive choices to improve their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, achieve their full potential and lead long, healthy, happy lives. We are part of the Trailblazer programme; GHLL works in partnership with the Young Minds Matter Team to support staff in the school and to help tackle challenges by helping young people to feel more resilient, arming them with techniques to look after themselves and strategies to help them cope better with life’s ups and downs.
Trailblazer programme
The Mental Health Support Teams' (MHSTs') main role will be to provide earlier care for children and young people who may be experiencing mild to moderate or early symptoms of mental health problems, which tend to be outside the scope of traditional NHS services. The MHST’s will travel to each school for meetings with staff to discuss any children and young people they think may benefit from their support. If a child is refusing to go to school, they will also work with families to help the child get back to school. Providing this additional resource to support early intervention, appropriate signposting and delivery of focused, evidence-based interventions will improve collaboration between schools and mental health services and enable earlier and more effective mental health support for children, young people, their families and carers. The Trailblazer programme will link a number of approaches, including working across the system to deliver a comprehensive training programme to increase knowledge and understanding of mental health, trauma and implementation of restorative practice, building resilience.
What are the Core Functions of a Mental Health Support Team (MHST)?
- 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
- Build relationships across services to ensure joint delivery of care
- Pilot a cultural and arts led approach as an alternative and contemporary approach
- Provide appropriate assessment of need, signposting and referral functions to a range of relevant services
- Provide evidence-based interventions for children and young people who present with mild to moderate mental health problems in a school or college setting
- Provide consultation and advice to other staff in schools and colleges around understanding children and young people’s mental health
- Form part of an integrated referral system with specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services to support children and young people who may present with more complex needs, or who require a more dedicated or intensive intervention
What is a Mild to Moderate Mental Health Problem?
A moderate mental health problem is when a person has more symptoms that can make their daily life much more difficult than usual. Examples of this can be, but not limited to:
- Low mood
- Exam stress
- Mild anxiety
- Low self-esteem
- Friendship issues
- Daily worries & upset
