Written question WQ83451

In the current year we have made £9m available to embed the whole school approach to emotional and mental health, with funding coming jointly from the Education and Health budgets. This represents an increase on the 2020-21 and 2019-20 years when we made £5m and £2.5m available for this work respectively.

Funding this year has been allocated as follows:

• £5m to roll out the CAMHS school in-reach pilots nationally, with the pilots seeing dedicated mental health practitioners providing consultation, liaison, advice and training in schools;

• £2.75m to local authorities to support improvements and an expansion of school counselling support; deliver universal and targeted interventions to learners; and train teachers and other school staff on wellbeing issues;

• £360,000 for Public Health Wales to recruit local coordinators to work directly with schools and other partners to implement local whole school approaches;

• £350,000 to provide direct support for teacher wellbeing; and

• the remaining £540,000 is being used to develop research and evaluation to ensure our work is having the desired impact, or address specific issues such as commissioning Swansea University to research self-harm, suicide and links to cyberbullying; or to support engagement, such as supporting our National Youth Stakeholder Group, which ensures the voice of the young person supports policy development.