All this week BBC News has been looking at Britain’s growing problem with mental illness, hearing from sufferers, politicians and the professionals who are in the front line of care – http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/in-the-mind

This comes alongside the latest announcement of funding for mental health including the £1.4bn (over five years) committed for children and young people’s (CYP) mental health to ensure that by 2020 at least 70,000 more children and young people have access to high quality care.
The Radio 4 programme this week, ‘Unhappy Child, Unhealthy Adult’ adds another dimension to the importance of early intervention in tackling mental health issues in children and young people – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b070dksr
A fifth of children have mental health problems before the age of 11 and these untreated health issues could well spiral into psychiatric problems later in life unless more is done in schools, according to The National Association of Head Teachers.
A snapshot survey of 1,455 English head teachers suggests that two-thirds of primary schools are unable to deal with these issues and three-quarters of school leaders reported that they lack the resources required to provide the kind of mental health care that children need. And it’s not just a problem in secondary schools; almost most two-thirds of primary school leaders say that it is difficult to access local mental health professionals. One NAHT head said: “There is a big gap in provision in this area for primary age children. When we feel we need more specialist intervention or advice than we are able to provide, there is not much else to access.”
The government has recently announced new initiatives to address the mental health issues of pupils Working as we do in schools, supporting staff, pupils and parents, Taafa knows how important the new government target is; for all schools to make counselling services available to their pupils.
Teachers are not counsellors, they’re educators but schools do need professional support to help them understand the issues causing the challenging behaviours and exclusions which research indicates are increasing at an alarming rate. make sure that problems in childhood do not spiral into bigger mental health problems later in life.
We’ve seen how training staff within a school around mental health, trauma and attachment issues is one effective way of supporting them in understanding what’s going on and helping them to ensure the strategies they implement are working to reduce the aggression and stress in schools and ensures better long term outcomes for students.
For details of our distance learning courses, on-site training and in house support, contact us at hello@taafa.org.uk