Medway Mental Health Leads Partnership

Overview

The Medway Mental Health Leads Partnership brings together school mental health leads and local services to improve communication, reduce siloed working, and create a shared, needs-led approach to supporting young people’s wellbeing. The group links education settings with mental health services, promotes a “no wrong door” culture, and strengthens the implementation of i-THRIVE across Medway.

By ensuring efficient communication to our mental health leads within schools as well as the ability to reach out to other mental health leads, supporting schools to be equal partners at those discussions as well as highlighting the challenges they face in using services.
The partnership provides shared language and understanding as well as any key updates taking place in the system.

i-THRIVE in Action

Common Language: Embedding the common language further with needs led language.

Needs-Led: The discussion is collaborative and needs led, where services/schools offer advice based on their previous experiences, sharing resources and what they can add to the existing offer.

Proactive, Prevention & Promotion: Regular updates, presentations, and information-sharing on local and national wellbeing offers based on key themes discussed or requested topics. Recorded elements from the countywide network meetings or promoting upcoming ones are also shared.

Partnership Working: The group fosters mutual respect across members and provides opportunities for partnership working to take place, either as part of projects or to working collaboratively to support a case discussion. By supporting stronger partnerships between mental health support teams and school nursing, ensuring understanding of the other services’ offers/remits. This led to co-development of resources and documentation such as mental health service poster, the i-THRIVE directory and the Emotional Wellbeing Partnership FAQ. These partnerships continue to develop, breaking down barriers between services and schools e.g. developing an understanding of challenges to access rooms for interventions during exam times.

Reducing Stigma: Members are passionate about this and promoting wider outside of the group and collaborating with others through sharing best practice. Through increasing awareness of wider service offers, members have readily to hand information, should advice be sought from a child or young person.

Accessibility: A shared resource drive, termly bulletin, and digestible updates help schools navigate services, reduce inappropriate referrals, and support timely help.

Conclusion and next steps

The partnership has evolved into a collaborative forum that champions a whole system needs-led approach to supporting wellbeing in educational settings, fostering strong partnerships and enhancing communication, and further embedding i-THRIVE across Medway.

Next steps include exploring barriers to attendance and expanding school representation.