Service Description

The Mental Health Support Team for Specialist Schools in Surrey is a school-based service, which supports the mental health of children and young people in specialist schools across Surrey. 

We offer support and advice to key people (teacher and or parent/ carer) around the child or young person to enable them to identify any concerns, understand what has happened for that child or young person and support any developing mental health needs. 

This involves our team visiting specialist education schools at intervals during the year, to provide in person consultation sessions with staff to discuss children and young people. We offer access to virtual consultation clinics in between these visits so staff can reach us to discuss a situation of concern. Our team is made up of two Clinical Psychologists who have experience of working in children’s mental health.

We can work with school staff and parent/carers to enable them to nurture children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing. We link closely with other services and partners, this enables us to support the school to consider what services are available for children, young people and families through signposting. 

 We also support specialist education setting to promote a whole school ethos and environment that supports the emotional and mental health of pupils, staff and the wider school community. 

Our team works closely with our Community Children and Young People Learning Disability Mental Health team.
 

We are school-based need support dedicated to Specialist Schools Surrey-Wide. The focus of our input will be for children/ young people attending these settings and their mental health needs. We currently support in the following school settings with a mixture of direct visits and virtual consultation clinics:

  • Bramley Oak Academy 
  • Grafham Grange School
  • Unified Academy 
  • Wishmore Cross Academy
  • Freemantles School 
  • Linden Bridge School
  • Limpsfield Grange School 
  • Sunny Down School 
  • Fox Grove School 
  • St Dominic’s School
  • Carwarden House Community School 
  • Philip Southcote School 
  • The Park School 
  • Gosden House School 
  • The Abbey School 
  • West Hill School 
  • Woodfield School
  • Manor Mead School at Virginia Water

A Severe Learning Disabilities Primary Mental Health Worker is the School Based Need/Link contact for these settings. They provide consultation to for children and young people to these school settings. Whilst MHST SS are not the main school-based need support to the Severe Learning Disability settings, we do offer support to these schools to promote a whole school ethos and environment that supports the emotional and mental health of pupils, staff and the wider school community. These schools include:

  • Manor Mead School 
  • Walton Leigh School 
  • Pond Meadow School 
  • The Ridgeway School 
  • Woodlands School 
  • Clifton Hill School 
  • Brooklands School

Once we discuss with the school the concern about your child we may ask to talk with parents/ carers if we wish to find out how your child is at home or in other situations outside of school. We would ask the education staff to arrange for us to meet, that could be in person at school, on a video call or a phone call. Typically, this would be for about 1 hour.

We may wish to observe your child/ young person in school as this can help us to better understand what might be going on for them and if there are triggers which are impacting on their emotional wellbeing. This may help us to develop a more specific plan to help their emotional wellbeing needs. If we have consulted about your child and seek to observe them we will ask the school to seek consent from you prior to us doing this.

We are not currently offering direct 1:1 therapy. However, we would support your child’s school to consider what local services maybe suitable to meet any identified needs which may be highlighted from our input.

Requests for support

We are a school-based need team, which means we work closely with school staff and provide our support into a school setting rather than in a clinic.

We accept requests for support from school staff- if you think our services may be helpful please contact the school the child/ young person attends.

Contact Details

Please speak to the child/ young person’s specialist school to enquire about the support we offer. This is the best way to access our support as we routinely link in with the schools we support.

You can email our Mental Health Support Team in Specialist Schools administrative email, Email: MHSTSpecialistSchools@sabp.nhs.uk. This is checked periodically – this is not for clinical enquires.

Please be aware that we work in between multiple school settings in the community. When you call our base the administrative team will take a message and let us know who has tried to contact the team.

We will do our best to check emails and reply as promptly as possible to messages, please expect that it is likely to take us time to respond. Our contact details are not for use during a crisis or where you are concerned about the safety of a child or young person.

For support during a mental health crisis: Telephone: 0800 915 4644 - For child, young people and parents. Open 24/7.