MMST education staff consultation

What happens during a staff consultation?

In the consultation we will ask the education staff for some general information about you, including things like:

• what you are finding difficult
• positives in your life
• how long you have been feeling like this
• people closest to you
• recent challenges in your life
• well-being goals

This information helps us to create a shared plan of what can be offered to support you.

The shared plan may give a range of different support options:

• It may be that we offer a workshop to your whole class
• We could offer information to your teachers or family to help support you
• We may guide you to other support services who could help
• We may offer a young person and family consultation to meet with you and gather more information about the difficulties.

During an education staff consultation, a member of the MindMate Support Team will  meet with a member of the education staff, who knows your child or young person well. Usually this is the member of staff who has supported the request for emotional wellbeing support. During the consultation, we ask for some general information about your child or young person including things like strengths, and what they are finding difficult. This information helps us to create a shared plan of what can be done to support your child or young person.

This plan will look different for every child or young person and will be made in collaboration with the person attending consultation.

We have three main approaches for support:

1. Provide advice and resources to support children and young people with their emotional wellbeing (including to education staff members) This may result in the MindMate Support team not needing to meet with your child/ young person.
2. Supporting children, young people, and their families to access other services, this may include signposting or completing referrals to other emotional wellbeing and mental health services in the city.
3. We may offer a further Young Person/Family consultation to explore whether direct 1 to 1 or group work would be beneficial. You can find out more about what this involves in the link below.

During a consultation, a member of the MindMate Support team will  meet with a member of the education staff, usually the designated mental health lead who works closely with the MindMate support team practitioner.

We ask for some general information about the young person including what they are finding difficult, how long the problem has been going on for, what are their strengths or positive factors. We also ask about potential risks and safeguarding concerns. This information helps us to create a shared plan of what can be accessed to support the young person.

These support plans will look different for every child or young person and will be made in collaboration with the person attending the  consultation.

We have four main approaches for support:

1. Provide advice and resources to support children and young people with their emotional wellbeing (including to education staff members). This may result in the MindMate Support team not needing to meet with the young person.
2. Supporting children, young people, and their families to access other services, this may include signposting or completing referrals to other emotional wellbeing and mental health services in Leeds.
3. Further consultation with the young person and or family (age dependent) if we require further information and feel the young person would benefit from cognitive behavioural therapy.
4. Direct work (one-to-one or group work) with a clinician in the MindMate Support team, dependent on age this may be with the young person or the parent or carer (for under 11s). More information can be found under our supported interventions page linked below.

After the consultation takes place the staff member that we meet with will share the plan created with the young person. This plan could include sharing resources, advice, or signposting to further support with other services.

If we feel that further information is needed the young person would be invited to a young person and family consultation. A member of our team will contact the young person or their parent or carer directly to arrange to meet them. You can find out more information about what to expect in a young person or family consultation below.

If the young person is aged 11 or over, they will be given the option to meet with one of our trained practitioners, either on their own or with parents, to talk about how they are feeling, what the problem is, how long the problem has been going on and explore how they would like to receive support.

If the young person is under the age of 11 it will be considered whether a parent or carer is required to join the consultation as we will be considering whether a Parent Led Approach would be more effective.