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Helping the Children’s Workforce feel confident in meeting children’s mental health needs.
Squires, G
In: International School Psychology Association 31st Annual Colloquium; 07 Jun 2009-11 Jun 2009; Buggiba, Malta. 2009.
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Abstract
Many educational psychologists (EPs) in the UK will have been involved in supporting their local authorities in introducing strategies that aim to promote children’s management of feelings, cooperative work with others and improving behaviour in order to improve their academic learning. This comes at a time when there is increasing concern about the mental health and emotional well-being of children and young people. The Children’s National Standards Framework Standard 9 clearly states that the UK government wants to see “An improvement in the mental health of all children and young people”(DoH, 2004). It goes on to describe how between ten and fifteen percent of children and young people have a mental disorder that would meet the criteria for a clinical diagnosis and a similar number of children have less serious problems that would benefit from some help. In total, it estimates that around two million children need intervention to improve emotional well being, mental health and resilience. The mental health of children is seen as being ‘everybody’s business’ with a tiered approach to intervention and support. With this in mind, there has been a call for all people who work with children to be given a basic training in identifying and meeting the needs of children’s mental health. In Staffordshire training has been organised by the local Children’s and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and this paper will discuss the evaluation of that training.