How will the Cabinet Minister ensure the continued embedding of the Whole School Approach to Mental Health?
You will be aware that our manifesto for the 2026 election included a commitment to a wraparound approach on behaviour, attendance and wellbeing within education. This has been further built on in our ‘first 100 days’ commitment to begin work to pilot a new wraparound ‘Community Schools Plus’ programme, exploring how different funding streams can be consolidated to better embed specialist and trauma informed support to address mental health, wellbeing and behavioural challenges in our schools.
Wellbeing will be an important part of our priorities for education over the course of this government and in looking to take forward the manifesto and ‘first 100 days’ commitments. I want to ensure programmes of work are mutually supportive and improve overall effectiveness and efficiency. Ensuring future governance and monitoring arrangements are appropriate and proportionate to ensure work is having the desired impact will also be an important consideration of developing future activity.