Establishing high quality training provision for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges

The Government has committed to incentivise and support all state schools and colleges to identify and train a senior lead for mental health by 2025. A link to the press notice from 10 May is available below.

We want to provide further information to providers that responded to our early notice to engage the market. This includes:

• An update on DfE progress, in readiness to offer schools and colleges grants for senior mental health lead training from the start of the new academic year 2021/22.
• A timeline, to help providers to prepare to offer additional grant-funded training to school and college senior mental health leads.
• An option, for those who would like, to provide feedback on the quality principles which will inform decisions on which courses can be accessed through this funding.

The presentation attached to this notice provides more detail.

To engage with our questions about ensuring that senior mental health lead training courses are of a high quality, please complete the form in the links below.

The deadline for responses is 19 May 2021.

UPDATE: We will be running a broadcast market event on the 26 May from 14.00 - 15.00 to tell providers about the plans for delivery of the senior mental health lead training (outlined in the presentation), and to provide an opportunity for questions.

If you would like to attend the event and have not received the details please contact us at the below e-mail with your name and organisation and role.

Additional information:

The Government set out a commitment in the 2017 Green Paper, Transforming children and young people's mental health to incentivise and support all schools and colleges to identify and train a senior lead for mental health by 2025.

The aim is to provide a senior person (or person supported by the senior team) in every state school or college with the knowledge and practical skills to develop or introduce their setting's holistic approach to wellbeing and mental health. The knowledge requirements and expected outcomes for the training closely align to Public Health England's (PHE) Promoting children and young people's emotional health and wellbeing (publishing.service.gov.uk) principles to promoting a whole school/college approach to emotional health and wellbeing.

In addition to the commitment to fund senior health leads in schools, the government has announced on 10 May a commitment to additional training and support for mental health and wellbeing for schools and colleges. This includes further support for schools and colleges through Local Authorities, who are being funded to deliver Wellbeing for Education Recovery (WER), building on Wellbeing for Education Return in 2020/21, and investment in training to support improvements in partnership working between health and education through a reformed Link Programme.

This Early Engagement Notice (EEN) is for information only, and the department reserves the right not to enter a formal procurement process and not award contract(s). The information contained in this notice, including information relating to the nature and scope of the authority requirements, the service classification of this requirement from the list of CPV codes, is only indicative of the authority's current thinking and is neither exhaustive nor binding. The authority reserves the right at its absolute discretion to amend it at the time of issue of any further notices or at any other time.

This EEN is not a binding statement of intent; it outlines the Authority's intention to engage with the supply market on an open and formal basis to develop potential options for this scheme if that is what is decided.