| answer text |
<p>Good mental wellbeing is a priority for this Government. The Department is looking
carefully at the evidence about children and young people’s mental wellbeing and how
to support it. In October 2019, we published the first ‘State of the Nation’ report
on children and young people’s wellbeing to bring together the evidence for England,
which has shown a slight fall in recent years. The full report is available at:<br>
<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2019-children-and-young-peoples-wellbeing"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2019-children-and-young-peoples-wellbeing</a>.</p><p>The
Department is taking forward a wide range of work to ensure that wellbeing is at the
forefront of our approach to supporting children and young people in schools. This
includes teaching pupils about looking after their mental health and wellbeing through
the introduction of the new subjects of relationships, sex and health education. This
will include the importance of sleep, understanding the benefits of rationing time
online and the risks of excessive time spent on electronic devices, including how
the content can affect their own and others’ mental and physical wellbeing.</p><p>The
Department is also improving collaboration with external agencies, to ensure those
pupils that need specialist support and treatment get it quickly. In particular, we
have a major joint programme of work with NHS England to introduce new mental health
support teams linked to schools and colleges, and to support schools and colleges
to put in place senior mental health leads.</p><p>The Department has several further
initiatives in place to support schools to develop and implement whole school approaches
to mental health and wellbeing. These include trialling approaches to promoting positive
mental wellbeing to ensure pupils have access to evidence based early support and
interventions – the largest trial in the world of its kind, piloting different approaches
to peer-to-peer support, and rolling out Mental Health Awareness Training to all state-funded
secondary schools, to improve capability to identify potential issues.</p><p>The Public
Health England Rise Above programme in schools and online provides advice for children
and young people on coping strategies for modern life. These strategies include dealing
with difficult emotions and situations that can lead to problems such as stress, bullying
and self-harm. Details can be found here:<br> <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/phe-launches-rise-above-for-schools-programme"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/news/phe-launches-rise-above-for-schools-programme</a>.</p><p>
</p>
|
|
