Schools Based Counselling Statement

Statement in response to Labour’s decision on Mental Health support for young people

On Monday, 12th May, to mark the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week, a delegation from Citizens UK leaders visited the Department for Education to seek clarity on how Labour would address the mental health crisis faced by many young people across England.

Addressing the mental health crisis across England is a key priority for Labour, and they have consistently emphasised the need for prevention-based approaches.

At the end of Mental Health Awareness Week, on Friday, May 16th, Secretary of State for Education Bridget Phillipson announced plans to expand Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in schools across England.

This announcement serves as a welcome acknowledgment of the urgent mental health challenges facing young individuals. The initiative aims to provide early access to trained mental health professionals, group sessions to address anxiety and low mood, and one-on-one interventions for students in need of assistance who do not meet NHS thresholds.

However, this, by itself, fails to address the systemic issues which impact the NHS in terms of mental health services.

We welcomed Labour’s commitment to reduce the pressures on Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the run-up to the General Election last year. We also welcomed the engagement of key Labour MPs with Citizens UK in the run-up to the General Election as they met with us to discuss this issue.

We were particularly encouraged by Sir Alan Campbell when he shared with some of our leaders in Tyne & Wear Citizens that ‘I’m delighted to be able to say to you all here today that, if elected, a Labour Government will ensure that there is a mental health counsellor in every school.’

We’re also encouraged by local and regional leaders in Brighton and Hove and in the North East of England. Council leader in Brighton and Hove, Cllr Bella Sankey, has agreed to invest £400,000 - £200,000 per academic year - in a scheme seeing counsellors operate in all of the city’s secondary schools. The scheme has been in place since September 2024 and will continue for at least another 18 months. The impact is already being felt in terms of young people’s wellbeing, their attendance, and their attainment. Likewise, Mayor for the North East Kim McGuinness has agreed to work with Tyne & Wear Citizens to roll out counselling across the region.

While the expansion of MHSTs is a step in the right direction, it falls short of meeting the scale and severity of the crisis. MHSTs are designed to support mild to moderate needs - they are not equipped to handle serious issues such as suicidal ideation. There remains a significant gap for the hundreds of thousands of children whose needs exceed what MHSTs can provide but still fall below the threshold for CAMHS. These young people risk falling through the cracks. We refer to those children as the ‘missing middle’. Many - although, we accept, not all - of those children could benefit from an average of 6-8 counselling sessions, delivered by adequately trained professionals. 6-8 sessions usually cost £350-450 when a CAMHS referral costs, on average, approximately £3,500.

The MHST model implicitly places additional responsibilities on school staff, many of whom are already under significant pressure. Even with the support of MHSTs, teachers and pastoral staff are not mental health professionals and should not be expected to carry the weight of increasingly complex mental health cases in the classroom.

We have welcomed Labour’s positive engagement with Citizens UK on the need to go further - specifically, by ensuring every school and college in England has access to a qualified, in-house counsellor, just as is already the case in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Our School-Based Counselling campaign outlines this vital need, and the evidence speaks for itself: research from Public First shows that the economic case for school counselling is overwhelming.

Universal access to school and college-based counselling for young people in England would generate lifetime fiscal benefits to the government of £1.9 billion, against an annual cost of about £250 million, as evidenced in a Public First report published in 2024.

We have requested a meeting with Ms Phillipson and her team and we look forward to hearing back from her.

Rvd Dr Simon Mason, Tyne & Wear Citizens, Chair of the Citizens UK School- and College-Based National Action Team

On behalf of Tyne & Wear Citizens, North London Citizens, Brighton & Hove Citizens, Reading Citizens, and Leicester & Leicestershire Citizens