Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs)

Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) is a new service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in primary, secondary and further education (primarily for ages 5 to 18), by providing mental health support in schools, colleges and other education settings, such as alternative provision.

Features and benefits

MHSTs will:

• deliver evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues
• support the senior mental health lead to develop a whole school  approach
• give timely advice to school staff, and liaise with external specialist services, to help children and young people get the right support and stay in education

Referral process

If it is felt there is a need for a pupil to access this service, we have a very clear referral criteria document to follow and then the necessary paperwork is completed and sent to the team.

Following their assessment and discussion with the Senior Mental Health Lead, the decision is made with how to move forward in terms of support.  This could be signposting to external support, in person visits to school, group intervention,1:1 support or perhaps parental support.

Meet the Team

Hi, we are the part of the West Mental Health Support team (Andover) made up of CBT Therapists, Trainee Education Mental Health Practitioners and Recruit to Train high intensity CBT trainees. We work for CAMHS as part of the Mental Health Support Team, our role being to work with schools and offer additional  support for young people's mental health needs.  We will work with groups of young people with mild to moderate mental health needs, as well as providing 1:1 interventions and parent led work. We will also be working with the school staff to introduce and support with whole school mental health approaches. This helps to bridge the gap between health and education services, as well as providing early help and support. We are all in a training year so have to work with the parameters of such but looking forward to creating a successful partnership with the school.  The team email is MHSTWest@spft.nhs.uk