Mental Health Awareness Week: More students offered mental health support in Hertfordshire

14 May 25

HPFT’s Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in schools have expanded in St Albans and Dacorum.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and this year’s theme is “community”. It is important that young people have supportive communities around them to help them with their mental wellbeing – we want to make sure that they have a strong support system to turn to when feel they are struggling.

Our MHSTs provide free early help and preventative mental health support for children and young people aged 5-19 years, helping them to get the right support and stay in education.

They do this by offering ways of managing emotions, and linking with other members of the young person’s community, such as supporting the mental health lead of the school or college, providing advice to staff and liaising with external specialist services.

The St Albans team is in the process of expanding from 20 to 40 schools, and our Dacorum team is expanding from 20 to 34 schools across Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted and Tring.

Lyndsey Hooper, Team Leader of St Albans MHST, said:

“So far, the new schools have been so grateful for the support.

“Samuel Ryder Academy has been very pleased with our Education Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP), and we have received very supportive feedback from them.”

Vikki Collar, Team Leader of Dacorum MHST, said:

“Schools are very complimentary with the service and are happy that a range of interventions to support pupil mental health can be delivered by our practitioners.

“Similarly, parents and carers are very pleased to hear that there is an extended wellbeing offer in schools.”

To learn more about our MHSTs, please visit our web page.

Our MHSTs help young people with various areas of life such as worries, stress and sleep. Below is some amazing artwork from young people for a competition that one of our teams held at their school.

The image shows a colourful drawing of three pandas in bed. The bed is vibrant with various colours like blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. The drawing is framed by a pink border decorated with glittery heart and star stickers. The image shows a drawing titled "sleep is important" at the top. Below the title, there's a drawing of a person sleeping in bed. The bed is made up of colourful sticky notes, each listing reasons why sleep is important, such as “to help us grow” and “to feel full of joy”.

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Mental Health Awareness Week: More students offered mental health support in Hertfordshire