Part of the Back to School series, helping to develop a rights-based approach to recovery.
The Scottish Government’s Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 sets out the vision to improve mental health in Scotland. A key section in the Strategy deals with prevention and early intervention and outlines the ambition that every child and young person should have appropriate access to emotional and mental wellbeing support in school. To date, this has seen the commitment to place a school counsellor in every secondary school as well as a commitment to enhancing support and professional learning materials for teachers on good mental health, including training for teachers (of children aged 11+) in Scotland’s Mental Health First Aid (SMHFA) training using a ‘train the trainer’ model to enable dissemination to all schools.
To ensure a strategic overview and appropriate links between the various strands of work the Scottish Government has established the Mental Health in Schools Working Group; Children’s Parliament is represented on this group.
There are a number of levels at which schools can address mental health education and support within a school environment. As we have described, the links to Curriculum for Excellence connect the Back to School resource with learning about and learning for mental, emotional and social wellbeing. Schools also need to develop a whole school approach and in terms of educational recovery – supporting children back to learning after lockdown – the Back to School resource provides an essential support for that work, providing practical approaches and resources to support children’s mental health and wellbeing.
Reference
Scottish Government’s Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027
https://maternalmentalhealthscotland.org.uk/news/scottish-government-mental-health-strategy-2017-2027
We have collated our published work from the Covid-19 period here: childrensparliament.org.uk/children-and-coronavirus/