A TEAM that helps Reading youngsters with their mental health have been shortlisted for a national award.
Brighter Futures for Children’s Mental Health Support Team (MHST) are up for Medium Team of the Year at the LGC Awards 2024. They are a subdivision of Reading Borough Council’s Brighter Futures For Children (BFFC) company.
They comprise senior educational psychologists, education mental health practitioners, wellbeing outreach workers, a primary mental health worker and a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) specialist clinician, plus business and data administrators, triage coordinator and an assistant education mental health practitioner.
They work with children aged five to 18, specialising in emerging, and mild to moderate mental health needs, across 36 infant, junior, primary, secondary and specialist settings and a college in Reading – 16 more than 2022.
Along with seven other teams, they will make presentations to a panel of judges in April before the awards ceremony in June.
Brian Grady, director of Education for Reading, was thrilled.
“The MHST fully deserves to be shortlisted for this national award and does an incredible job as part of a wider mental health offer in Reading,” he said.
“The work of the team to promote and support mental health in Reading schools has helped children and young people feel open to talk about mental health and to understand what support is available.
“Locating the MHST within BFfC, which delivers children’s services, including education on Reading Borough Council’s behalf, has helped to embed a consistent and inclusive whole school approach to understanding and responding to mental health as part of BFfC’s wider commitment to being trauma informed and thinking therapeutically.”
