£810,000 for mental health support in London schools

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced a funding of £810,000 to provide mental health support for up to 15,000 young Londoners in schools across the capital.

The programme, delivered in partnership with Anna Freud – a leading mental health charity for children and young people – will work with targeted secondary schools across nine boroughs to help young people where there is a high need for mental health support.

The programme is designed to help young Londoners feel supported. It will focus on making sure that every part of school life actively supports the mental health and wellbeing of pupils, staff and families. This could include teaching stress-management techniques, introducing initiatives to make mental health more visible such as wellbeing weeks, parent sessions, peer-support groups or mental health training to teachers and support staff.

As young people continue to face increasing mental health challenges, this initiative will help develop a model for how this innovative approach can work across a range of London school and provide vital evidence for the future of children’s mental health support. Learnings will be shared with schools, the government and NHS partners as we work collaboratively to prepare for the full roll out of Mental Health Support Teams in schools by 2030.     

The new programme follows polling from YouGov last year, commissioned by Global Future Partners¹, that found almost one in four young Londoners regularly feel emotionally unwell, and that almost half of 16–24 year olds feel their schools did not teach them enough about coping with mental health struggles.

Evaluation of the new programme will be carefully conducted by Healthy Dialogues Ltd, with best practice shared with other schools across the capital to help them adapt to suit their individual needs.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “By working with our fantastic schools, partners and our NHS we can have a positive and lasting impact on our young people that can also help others across the country, as we work to make London the greatest and healthiest city in the world to grow up in.”