MP praises mental health support at Godalming College

Godalming's MP Jeremy Hunt has praised the provision of mental health support services at Godalming College as 'outstanding'.

The former health secretary made the comment during a round table discussion on the eve of World Mental Health Day, which is marked today (Saturday).

During the discussion, which took place over Zoom, Mr Hunt said the college "blazes a trail among the colleges I have had cause to talk to about this issue."

Participants in the session included the college principal, Emma Young, deputy principal Carole Horlock and senior tutor Jenny Hunter-Phillips, who leads on mental health welfare at the college.

Also contributing were Dr Clare Fuller from Surrey Heartlands and Professor Tim Kendall, NHS England's National Clinical Director for Mental Health.

Kicking off the session, Mr Hunt said he had been "really encouraged at the way mental health hasn't been shoved aside in the way it might have been in a previous year when you might have had a respiratory illness."

Also joining the discussion were two college students who described the difficulties they had had in accessing treatment for their mental health issues, in particular the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Surrey.

Both described the frustration of being put on long waiting lists for help: one of the students said a GP had been 'dismissive and patronising' when approached for help.

Both, however, praised the support they had received from staff at Godalming College.

Sympathy.

Mr Kendall expressed his sympathy for the students. "It's a horrible experience of plucking up the courage to go and see people who should help. What kind of service is that?" he said. "In defence of CAMHS, children and young people's services take about one out of four kids with a mental health problem. "They only take people who are very ill; for example, people with eating disorders would go in and they would say 'your BMI isn't low enough'. "Since 2016 we have been putting money into CAMHS services to increase the number of kids that can be seen. "One of the things that Jeremy Hunt did [as health secretary] was get more funding to set up a new programme in schools. We now have therapists working in schools and colleges, but it's a 10-year programme before we get there. "Our aim is to triple the size of CAMHS, if not quadruple it.

"People who do get into CAMHS, generally speaking, have a good experience."

"Bullying is the major issue in schools and on the internet," he said. "If you get anti-bullying campaigns going in schools you reduce the number of kids ending up with depression."

Talking encouraged.

Godalming College Principal Emma Young told the meeting: "We are in a much better place now because students can talk about their mental health, which is much more acceptable today. We really encourage this at college. It's really important that students talk about how they are feeling. "We signpost students to support, but we feel we can't provide enough support. The resources have to come from our existing budget." She said the college didn't have the money to fund a health and wellbeing officer. "I think there could be more done in that regard to help the education sector in the provision of mental health support," she said. She said she felt the issue with CAMHS was that students fell between the categories of children and adults. "That's something we need to work and address and look at," she said. Deputy principal Carole Horlock echoed her concern about students falling between the two categories. "They are falling between the gaps of children and adult mental health," she said. Action plan.

Jenny Hunter-Phillips leads the mental health action plan at college: she listed a series of initiatives run by staff and students to de-stigmatise mental health, and support students with mental health issues.

And she added: "We would always like more resources to be able to do more. We are about prevention and a cross-college approach to mental health."

She outlined a scheme whereby eight student leaders had been appointed to help break down the stigma around mental health.

She said the college's resources focused on wellbeing, and staff had created a 'wellbeing at home' pack for students to work with during lockdown.

"We try to get everyone involved," she said.

College counsellors had marked today's World Mental Health Day, and the Students' Union had joined the five-step Hello Yellow challenge, a nationwide campaign focused on mental health and wellbeing.

'Brilliant work'.

Dr Clare Fuller, a GP and Senior Responsible Officer at Surrey Heartlands, said she was 'encouraged to hear about the work going on at Godalming'. "The brilliant work that's going on in Godalming is bringing together help and education and appropriate care so that we can make decisions that will hopefully start to improve things from where they are now," she said. She added that the work was "building on infrastructures within our communities." Figures show that there have been 13 adolescent suicides in Surrey over the past eight or nine years, she added: the common theme was that 90% of those people had expressed concerns about their mental health. She said children's mental health had been made the top priority across NHS England. "When the NHS gets more money, mental health will get a greater percentage than anything else," she said. "We have a long-term plan of building up what we have done with children and young people up until 2019." The emphasis then would be on expanding children's mental health services, she explained. New programme.

She gave further detail of the new programme that will see mental health support teams, made up of people specially trained in psychological intervention, put into schools to help children and young people.

The plan, which was drawn up by Mr Hunt while he was Secretary of State for Health, has already started to be rolled out and is currently running on 180 sites: the aim is to have it in all 22,500 schools across the country. The mental health support team will be made up of between eight and 10 people working across 12 to 15 schools between them.

"By March 2021 we will make sure that anybody who has an eating disorder is referred to the eating disorder service and will be seen within one week if it's urgent, and if not urgent they will be seen within four weeks. We will see 86% of children within those times. By this time next year I think we will have hit 95%," she said.

But she added that the scheme to train mental health leads in schools had not been so successful, and had been delayed by a year: Mr Hunt responded that the leads were an important part of his plan, and he would discuss the issue further 'with my select committee hat on'.

Doctor Fuller echoed Mr Hunt's praise for Godalming College, saying: "What they are doing in Godalming College is fantastic. It sounds absolutely brilliant."

To find out more about World Mental Health Day, click here.

To find out more about Godalming College, click here.

To contact Jeremy Hunt, click here.