Agenda item

The Chair of the Children and Young People Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Partnership Board, Dr John French, introduced the report and explained that St. Mary’s Catholic High School was the first school to trial the Trailblazer programme in Croydon.

In December 2018 there had been a joint workshop with the Health & Wellbeing Board where the four key elements for the Mental Health Local Transformation Plan to focus on, these being: engagement with children, young people, their families, carers and communities; supporting schools and colleges to promote the emotional health and wellbeing of all their pupils; Clinical Pathways: navigating through the system with the right access at the right time in the right place; and strategic join up and wider work: maximising the resilience of the population through working with wider services and approaches.

The Board was informed that the Youth Engagement Manager, Emily Collinsbeare, had been working alongside Croydon Drop In to create a leaflet commissioned by the council and written by users and children which had been published for parents, carers and professionals. It was offered that copies were distributed to Board Members for their information.

Officers had been looking at how people were accesses services to determine a single point for all areas for referring patients who were in need of care. South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM) had developed a triage to refer patients to the appropriate agencies. It was noted that it was a large piece of work and unfortunately resources were limited, particularly with CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services).

Councillor Hopley noted that she had attended an event on the Croydon Trailblazer programme with the Vice-Chair, Executive Director - Children Families and Education and Councillor Margaret Bird. She informed the Board Members that the event was extremely helpful to see how the local schools could deal with mental health and identify the issues at an early stage, particularly through the schools working closely with the families. Councillor Hopley highlighted that these concerns were not due to deprivation or poverty based as there were these problems in private schools also. The Director of Public Health noted that there were different elements to mental health and there were no identified trends. The suicide rates were fortunately low in Croydon but they would see if any patterns could be identified across South London. 

The Executive Director - Children Families and Education noted that from the demonstration at the Croydon Trailblazer programme event it was clear that the tracking software was already beginning to have an impact. Having a designated mental health professional based in the school working with children, families and staff had transformed the behaviour and attitude towards mental health. He explained to the Board that he was going to begin communicating with schools shortly to see if the Trailblazer programme would be useful and begin rolling the scheme out. The Chair added that a high number of state schools were unable to do a trial in the Trailblazer programme as they did not have the resources available.

The Headteacher of St Mary's Catholic High School, Mr Patrick Shields, was present as his school was the first in Croydon to trial the Trailblazer programme. He explained that the Trailblazer programme was working in conjunction with other schemes and partnerships within the school to significantly improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of the pupils.

The Board Members were informed that clusters were to be formed across the local boroughs and Mr Shields and Ms Portia Kumalo were beginning to develop a cluster group action plan, including auditing and establishing policies. This would be reviewed in the December half term 2019.

The Headteacher explained that the key elements of the Trailblazers programme were: pupils now had direct access to trained mental health first aiders; staff had received vocabulary training to identify signs at early stages, as well as full awareness training; the Headteacher would meet with parent groups, in particular the Year 7 welcome evenings; and publicity around the school with full signposting, including online advice. He also noted that through the Trailblazers programme he now had direct access to senior staff in CAMHS which had been beneficial when specialist help was needed or a referral needed processing quickly.

It was explained that some of the success was due to St Mary's Catholic High School working closely with the local authority, in particular the Early Help team, appointing an Early Help lead, and employing a qualified social worker to be based permanently on the site.

The Board Members were informed that exclusions in St Mary's Catholic High School had reduced by 80% since the introduction of the programme as staff were looking closely at the underlying behaviours which caused the reaction, rather than the reaction itself. The Headteacher noted that whilst this had been positive the programme had caused a drain on resources and increased stress levels in teaching staff. The school did not have additional resources when the pupils were being kept in school, when previously they would have been excluded to the public referral unit.

The Board were delivered a presentation by Ms Kumalo, which detailed the Trailblazers programme across South London and specifically to the London Borough of Croydon. She introduced by explaining that the original work had started in 2017 focusing on self-harm and was then widened to emotional resilience; a strategy was formed in partnership with local children and the aim was to reduce self-harm by 20%. The Prime Root Cause was identified as “There is not consistent early and effective support for emotional wellbeing in our children and young people”.

The presentation highlighted the following: the matrix team, including the system leaders; the early engagement work with children and young people; the Whole School Approach; the development of clusters; the current Trailblazer sites and the next two “waves” of enrolment, including the next Croydon site to be focused on reducing knife crime and youth violence; a further education site to be developed which would focus on the transition points for children, in particular from school to college and then to work or further education; the successful bid submitted to be trailblazer for Green Paper; achievements; and what had been learnt since implementation.

The South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust representative, Hilary Williams, noted that her son attended a Trailblazer school site and she had noticed a development in his emotional intelligence since the implementation of the scheme. 

In response to Councillor Hall the Director of Public Health explained that there were other mental health aids within schools; the Trailblazer programme was a really important piece of work but the report did not capture all the work being completed in local schools. She noted that it was important to introduce benchmarking to identify how the programme linked to other areas of work within Croydon.

The Vice-Chair noted that the programme demonstrated that a large impact can be made within a short timeframe and it was extremely positive to see the different it was making for children, families and teaching staff.

Councillor Hopley agreed with the Board Members that the programme was extremely positive; however, she noted concern that a lot of local children were attending schools in different boroughs and would not be included.

Councillor Hopley queries how the data would be collected and analysed and expressed the importance of the information being centralised. She further requested that a selection of case studies be presented to a future Health & Wellbeing Board.

The Healthwatch representative, Edwina Morris, informed the Board that Healthwatch had worked with some students from Croydon College during the summer holiday 2019 through a workshop setting. The students designed a survey regarding mental health and collected data from 146 survey results, with the average age of participant being 17. She noted that it would be useful to share these findings with the Board, Croydon College and other partners of the Trailblazers programme.

The Croydon Voluntary Action (CVA) representative, Steve Phaure, noted that the CVA had been successfully granted a large bid, which would generate £1.6m to the scheme. The CVA would begin supporting 1400 children in the borough on a one-to-one basis.

In response to Councillor Campbell the Headteacher explained that there were extra pressures on teaching staff now; for example, removing the option of exclusion from teachers and being required to de-escalate situations that may arise. There had also been external pressures on teachers and the school, such as, a free school being opened within close proximity to the school, ensuring pupils were retained to secure funding, and Ofsted inspections. It was noted that staff were beginning to understand mental health from a different view and the benefits of not excluding pupils; however, it was important for teachers to not lose their authority and carefully balance therapy and mental health help with punishment. The Chair added that she used to be a teacher and agreed that teachers must feel additional pressure not being able to exclude and retaining their authority.

RESOLVED – that the Board:

1)    Noted the progress since January 2019 against the four priorities of Croydon’s LTP (Local Transformation Plan) for Children and Young People’s Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health,

2)    Noted the progress of the Croydon Trailblazer programme within the context of the South West London Trailblazer programme, and

3)    Noted the process by which the Board can influence the annual refresh of the Local Transformation Plan.