Fleur Harrison from Dorset’s Mental Health in Schools team tells us more about their work and how it helps young people

“The Mental Health Support in Schools Teams (MHST) are part of a joint national initiative between the Department of Education and NHS England to improve access to psychological therapies for children and young people with emerging low mood and mild to moderate anxiety within an educational environment.
 

“The core key functions of our team are to provide evidence-based interventions for children and young people presenting with mild to moderate mental health needs. This includes working 1-1 with children, young people and their families, group work and group parenting classes. 
 

“We also provide support to the designated mental health lead in schools as part of the ‘whole school approach’ which aims to raise awareness of mental health and provide early intervention and prevention strategies and support.
 

“The other core function of our team is to provide timely advice and signposting to school and college staff and liaise with other external agencies to help ensure children and young people get the right support at the right time.
 

There are three locality teams covering parts of:

• Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch (BCP)
• Weymouth, Portland and Dorchester
• North and East Dorset

“The aim is to have full coverage of all schools in Dorset. You can find out more about our service on our website: Mental Health Support Teams in Schools (MHSTs) – CAMHS Dorset
 

“As well as providing support in the areas highlighted above, we’ve started a successful social media account to share the resources we make within the team and offer support to Dorset. The social media account is linked to a Linktree available to anyone, where they can download our resources for free via this link: https://linktr.ee/dorsetmhst.
 

The social media account includes a variety of resources to support all the different age ranges we work with including support for parents and support for teenagers leaving school.

Follow us on social media: @dorsetmhst for more resources and keep up to date with our current content.