Mental health support team (MHST)

Sheffield mental health support team (MHST) offers support to children and young people in Sheffield, in and around host schools.

We provide support to schools with:

• the whole school approach to emotional health and wellbeing
• consultations regarding specific mental health topics
• workshops for children and young people, parents and carers, and school staff
• individual and group work for children, young people and parents and carers

The team is made up of NHS mental health practitioners who are part of Sheffield child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS).

Why am I getting this resource?

Your school has identified that your child may benefit from some early support around emotional wellbeing. This will involve speaking to a trained clinician or educational mental health practitioner (EMHP), in a confidential space in school. This is so we can get to know you and your child and find out if the approach we offer is likely to help.

If we think that a low intensity therapeutic approach is a good fit, then we will suggest a plan. This usually involves 4 to 8 sessions of talking therapy. Meetings are likely to be weekly, and we will review how it is going with your after 4 sessions.

What does low intensity support look like in school?

The majority of low intensity support uses principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (talking therapy) to improve symptoms of anxiety and low mood over a brief period (up to 8 sessions).

The aim is to help you work towards a goal related to emotional wellbeing. There will be some suggested activities to work on outside the sessions.

For primary school aged children, we often offer weekly parent-led cognitive behavioural therapy, where we aim to pass on therapy skills to enable parents to help their child. If we suggest one to one work with your child, we hope to involve parents and carers as much as possible and suggest parents attend appointments when they can, especially the first and last session.

What happens next?

Once you have given permission for a referral, the mental health lead in your child’s school completes our referral form, which we then review. We do not accept all referrals, as sometimes we are not the best people to help, because:

• there are other teams involved with your child who are better able to meet your child’s needs
• we think there might be a better service out there for your child
• the approach that we use is not likely to be beneficial

Confidentiality and working with the mental health support team

The work of the mental health support team is treated with the same confidentiality as other healthcare appointments (is it kept confidential unless we think someone is in danger). We normally share updates with the mental health lead in your school (who refers to us) and your child’s GP.

We use a system to record our notes and letters. As other healthcare professionals also use this system, you will be asked if:

• we can view toes that other services write, and
• if other services can read the notes we write

You can change this at any time.

If you have any concerns about how information is shared, you can discuss this further with your allocated educational mental health practitioner. If you would like some more information or support, please get in touch with us and we will be happy to help.

Contact

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at:

Mental Health Support Team
Albion House
Savile Street, Sheffield
S4 7UD
0114 305 3218

The educational mental health practitioner allocated to your school is:

The educational mental health practitioner senior clinician allocated to your school is:

The mental health lead in your school is: