The Mental Health Support Team (MHST) is part of Cheshire’s Children and Young People's Mental Health Services (CYPMHS) - formerly known as CAMHS - and is a service designed to help meet the mental health needs of children and young people in education settings.
In the MHSTs, children and young people’s wellbeing practitioners (CYWPs) and education mental health practitioners (EMHPs) offer support for mild to moderate mental health and wellbeing difficulties, and support education settings to develop their whole school approach to mental health.
MHSTs works alongside identified primary and secondary schools and the number of schools we work with continues to grow.
Who is the service for?
The service has three main functions:
- To deliver brief evidence-based interventions to support children and young people with mild-moderate mental health problems (individually or in groups)
- To support schools in developing their whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing (through workshops, needs audits, parent/ carer or staff training)
- To provide timely advice to school staff and liaison with external services, to help children and young people to get the right help (through regular consultations with the school's mental health lead)
How to access the service
Cheshire MHST accepts referrals from the mental health lead (MHL) in each school. If you are concerned about your child’s emotional wellbeing, please speak to your child’s school's MHL, who will then be able to discuss your child (with your consent) with our EMHP or CYWP. This will enable us to identify the most appropriate support for your child, which may be support from our team, support through school, or from another team or local organisation.
What will happen at your first appointment?
Once the MHST has accepted a referral, the practitioner at your child’s school will contact you to introduce themselves and arrange an assessment. The assessment will take place with the child/young person and a parent/carer present, usually at your child’s school.
During the assessment, we will ask questions about the problem, family, school, friends, physical health, hobbies, and staying safe.
There might be a follow-up call to the parent/carer after the initial assessment to check that all relevant information has been shared. Next steps will be agreed following the assessment.
Where are we based?
Cheshire MHST carries out most of their work with children and families in the child’s school. This means that the child is in a familiar environment and is missing as little of their education as possible. Should an appointment in a school not be possible or suitable, community venues or NHS venues can be used. Alternatively, some appointments may be carried out remotely via a Microsoft Teams call or a phone call.
Where else do we provide the service?
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership also provides an MHST services in Wirral, which works in a similar way to Cheshire MHST. For more information, please visit the Wirral MHST page.
Contact us
If you need to get in touch with the team, please either speak to your child’s school's mental health lead or, once you are allocated a practitioner from the MHST, email the Cheshire MHST admin team at cwp.
Our service operates all-year-round (including school holidays) from Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm (except bank holidays).