(CAMHS) and Schools - London Health Programmes

Mental health workers have a strong ethos that parents need to be involved in any
therapy or intervention with a child. In many cases the model of working closely with
the school provided a useful bridging and mediating opportunity for parents and
schools where there had been a breakdown in communications. However, the issue of
confidentiality and information sharing was raised.
There were different experiences and opinions on whether services in schools were
more accessible to parents. On one hand, the school is local and easy for parents to
come to, particularly in rural areas. Both health and school interviewees felt that
school based services can be less stigmatising as they can say they are going to the
school for a meeting rather than going to a clinic. On the other hand, many workers
found it very hard to engage parents and several had tried to run parents groups and
failed. Some parents groups were deliberately re-located away from the school to
other community facilities. This was a greater problem in secondary schools than
with early years and primary schools.
5.3.8 Services for minority ethnic groups
Few respondents to the questionnaire gave examples of specific work with children
and young people from minority ethnic communities. A few examples are:
‘assessment of individual children, attend SEN reviews, school based
intervention, regular consultation with SENCO at 1 school, developing and
managing school based project for Bengali girls and boys’ (questionnaire)
‘part of 2 multi-agency projects working with Bangladeshi boys and girls.
Individual and group work directly with children and young people’
(questionnaire)
Findings from the literature review highlighted the need for training with staff on
issues of working with minority groups. In the case studies, few of the interviewees
had been given training on specific issues of working with minority groups, although
many expressed awareness of the make up of the community they worked in and the
impact of their own background might have on their work. The manager of one
service with a high minority population stressed the importance of ensuring that
mainstream services are appropriate and applicable for all members of the
community. He felt that the closer the services were based to the community the
more accessible they would be. Although making mainstream services as accessible
as possible was a priority, the service did recommend Black young people to a
specialist project run by a voluntary organisation. This project ran a drop in
counselling service in schools and ran out of school education and counselling.
Mental health assessments, where necessary, are made by an Afro-Caribbean child
psychiatrist.
Other respondents from the questionnaire outlined specialist provision for minority
groups. One example is the Map project, which is a joint enterprise between SSD,
Schools, Mental Health Service, youth service and the voluntary sector. It is run by a
multi- disciplinary team of social workers, youth workers, and psychologists. Its aims
are to offer an early preventative intervention service to adolescent Bangladeshi boys
and their families, support at-risk boys to use schools and social surrounding and to