Education Mental Health Practitioners work with schools and colleges to provide early mental health support to children and young people.
Education mental health practitioners work in mental health support teams that help children and young people in schools and colleges. They provide early brief, evidence-based interventions to help the mental health needs of children and young people. The role also includes supporting the school or college in initiatives to prevent mental health problems by changing the school or college environment.
You will need to complete a year-long training course to qualify as an EMHP. Although you don’t need a degree to apply for this training programme, you’ll need to demonstrate your ability to work at degree level and have experience of working with children and young people to support their mental health.
As an EMHP, you will work alongside other practitioners and supervised in your work by more senior practitioners. You will be part of a mental health support team, but work in an educational setting where you will work closely with education and support staff and other healthcare professionals.
- Assessing and supporting children and young people with common mental health difficulties, particularly mild to moderate anxiety, depression, and behavioural issues
- Providing evidence-based treatment interventions, including guided self-help and therapeutic activities
- Promoting improvements in organisational approaches to emotional health and wellbeing
- Supporting and signposting education workers to ensure appropriate support for children and young people
- You will be provided with regular supervision and ongoing training to keep your skills and knowledge up to date
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I will work 1:1 with a young person who is struggling with anxiety or worry for 6-8 sessions for 30-60 minutes depending on the young person’s needs. This will be delivered in school, and I will update parents regularly in relation to risk (if present) or just on what we have covered and how they can support at home. In the sessions we will cover a psychoeducation (what anxiety is) and then we will look at strategies that will help a young person manage this. Routine outcome measures and goals are discussed every session so we can monitor and discuss the progress of treatment. At the end of treatment, a relapse plan is completed so that the young person can feel comfortable with ‘flying solo’ after the support of a practitioner.
Being an education mental health practitioner is my dream job. I’ve wanted to be a practitioner since completing my BSc (hons) Psychology degree but at that time improving access to psychological therapies was purely for adults and although I tried to break into adults the competition was very stiff. My work experience was all with children and families, and I completed my MSc in Family and Child Psychology so when the opportunity arose to train as an education mental health practitioner, I grabbed it with two hands. I even travelled to work, at the time I was living in Oldham and travelling to Wirral to train and work. It was extremely demanding but I wanted more than anything to be a children and young person’s therapist so I stuck at.
My days have changed now, as I am member of the senior leadership team. However, when I was a full education mental health practitioner, my day would be spent in my allocated school for that day. I would see a mix of 1:1s, perhaps run a group or one of workshop. I would meet with the mental health lead of my allocated school for that day. I would then return to the office to make update phone calls to parents and write up my notes for the day.
I’m on every mail list I can get my address to. This helps as there will normally be some training sessions that I can attend and then pass back to my team in our team meetings. Updates also come from the trust, senior leaders and also from our trainees who on the ground getting it ‘from the horses mouth’ through NICE guidelines and NHS England.
Seeing that change in young people from where they came in to where they are leaving us. Some times this is enormous and sometimes it is small, but I also take time to remind young people that the size of the change doesn’t matter. This is what I do my job for and even if I don’t always get a thank you (although there are a lot of those too), that’s how I know I’ve done a good job. You also get it months and sometimes years after, the mental heath lead will share that they have seen a young person that I had worked with and they will comment on how well they are doing and looking and that’s just magic for me.
100% you need to be a good listener, if you’ve got that you are on your way. If you have the ability to get on a level with young people and connect to them that is also a great quality to have. A lot of the time our young people don’t feel heard or listened to or they are scared to share how they are feeling for whatever reason, you could be the first person that they have shared some difficult thoughts and feelings with. So, I would say you also need to be resilient individual as we’re all human and somethings the young people share can be hard hitting. I would also say being flexible and being able to think on your feet. Although the approaches you will follow are manualised, being able to think on your feet and get creative will serve you well when you deliver sessions.
Stick at it, if you know you’re great with young people, you’re passionate about promoting positive mental health and sharing lifelong skills to manage. Stay with it and don’t let the inner saboteur take over, you can do it! I would say it’s much like going into therapy, as long as you’re in the right headspace to start the journey and you’re ready to commit to the learning and give it everything you can achieve it’s hard but it’s everything worth having? Oh, and you might put on some weight during the process, don’t beat yourself up about that you need it at the time.
If you have done a psychology degree or a masters this helped me with my learning and understanding of mental health presentations. I wouldn’t say you need to it’s just useful if you have. The same with a teaching qualification, I don’t have a formal teaching qualification and I notice the difference between my colleagues who have this and myself, but a big part of the formation of the mental health support team was that young people didn’t want the teams to be dominated by all health or all education or social care backgrounds they wanted a mix of practitioners with different experiences and knowledge. In regards to further reading I’ve had Cognitive Therapy of Anxiety Disorders: A Practice Manual And Conceptual Guide by Adrian Wells for years and I picked up while on the course this was also I really useful resource.
Hugely, so when I started training covid hit and we went into lockdown, all sessions went from face-to-face to online, this was a challenge within itself. Now, I try to keep all sessions to face-to-face and use online as back up so that young people can still receive treatment. As I feel and the feedback, I get from young people is that they prefer a face-to-face especially for 1:1. Online has been fantastic for parent work though, due to parents’ schedules and commitments. We also have to strike the balance between using technology but also understanding that too much time on devices and social media in particular is having a huge impact on our young people’s mental health.
It has been and will also be making a difference no matter how small to a young person’s life. That is what gets me through those days when I am stretched and feeling the pressure. It also pushes me through the days when a case is tricky or complex. What I will say, having held many different roles (nursery nurse, family liaison officer and education health care plan co-ordinator). I definitely don’t get shouted at by service users as much as I used to in other roles, so that’s always a plus that you feel like your work is much more collaborative and supportive rather than directive. Although the tough days will be some of the toughest you’ve had in your life. The good days and moments are equally going to be some of the best you’ve ever had in your work life.
The video below published by Pennine CAMHS shows Harriet from Stockport mental health support team talking about being an educational mental health practitioner, supporting children at local schools.
- British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies
- NHS Careers – Education Mental Health Practitioner
- NHS Careers – Psychological professions
- NHS England – Future in mind
- NHS funding for psychological professions training programmes
- The British Psychological Society
- The role of an Education Mental Health Practitioner as part of the career map for the psychological professions, Psychological Professions Network
