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<p>The support schools provide to their pupils as they return to face-to-face education
should include time devoted to supporting mental health and wellbeing, which will
play a fundamental part in supporting children and young people’s recovery. The £700
million package includes a new one-off Recovery Premium for state primary, secondary
and special schools to use as they see best to support disadvantaged students. This
will help schools to provide their disadvantaged pupils with a one-off boost to the
support, both academic and pastoral, that has been proved most effective in helping
them recover from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and can be used for mental health
and wellbeing support.</p><p>This funding follows our £1 billion COVID-19 “catch-up”
package which includes £650 million shared across early years, schools and 16-19 providers
over the 2020/21 academic year to support education settings to put the right catch-up
and pastoral support in place. This is already being used by schools to put in place
additional mental health and wellbeing support.</p><p>We have recently announced a
£79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, including
through Mental Health Support Teams. The support teams, which provide early intervention
on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges, will grow
from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3
million children. This increase means that millions of children and young people will
have access to significantly expanded mental health services.</p><p>The department
has convened its Mental Health in Education Action Group, to look at the impact of
the COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health and wellbeing of children, young people
and staff in nurseries, schools, colleges, and universities. It is bringing together
partners to take additional action to support mental wellbeing of children and young
people with the return to education settings and with transitions between education
settings in September 2021. This will include looking at what more we can do to help
schools to make the most effective use of recovery premium to support mental health
and wellbeing.</p><p>We also remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme
with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, including introducing
new mental health support teams for all schools and colleges, providing training for
senior mental health leads in schools and colleges, and testing approaches to faster
access to NHS specialist support.</p><p> </p>
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