Children and Young People's Mental Health Trailblazer programme

The Children and Young People's Mental Health Trailblazer programme is a national project funding the creation of mental health support teams working in schools and further education colleges. 

The Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and Improvement have selected areas across England to test out new ways of supporting children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing. 

Main goals of the programme include:  

• improving early intervention and access to support:

  • helping to prevent children from developing mental health problems 

  • helping children who do have mental health problems to be identified and supported earlier 

• promoting good mental health and wellbeing for all children and young people 

The programme involves having a named person who will lead the school or college’s mental health and well-being approach and create mental health support teams. These teams will support school staff to develop a ‘whole school approach’ to mental health. 

This national programme started in 2018 and will run until 2023. The first wave of areas testing out the new approaches are called ‘Trailblazers’. 

The evaluation is organised into three work-streams:

1. Understanding the starting points and progress made across the 25 trailblazers areas

2. In-depth research in six case study trailblazer areas

3. Assessing the feasibility and considering options for the design of a longer-term impact evaluation

Working with children and young people

From the beginning of the project, the evaluation team has been working closely with University of Birmingham Institute for Mental Health’s Youth Advisory Group. In particular, the Youth Advisory Group is co-designing the recruitment and consent process/materials, and research tools, for the focus groups with children and young people.

Early evaluation of the Children and Young People's Mental Health Trailblazer Programme: Initial findings July 2021

Despite the early challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, many participants of the first phase of fieldwork shared examples of early outcomes they had observed, such as:

• better partnership working and collaboration between the organisations and sectors that were involved in the programme locally

• more timely access to support

• positive feedback from the children and young people who had been supported by the MHST (Mental Health Support Team)

• better signposting to external mental health services

• staff feeling more knowledgeable and comfortable talking to pupils about mental health issues

• development of a more proactive and positive culture around mental health and wellbeing in their setting

Full evaluation findings will be published in a final report in Summer 2022