Senior Mental Health Lead training - quality-assured by the DfE

To mark Children's Mental Health Week, the DfE announced an additional £3 million of funding for Designated Senior Mental Health Lead training, enabling schools and colleges to start booking and attending grant-funded courses up to 31 May 2022.

Book your place

Grants are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the funds have been allocated. Once all the available grants have been issued, the application system will ask if you want to join a waiting list.

Please note: the DfE has confirmed that it is still accepting applications even if the system says all grants have been allocated.

To secure your place on Thrive's DfE quality assured training, you will need to follow the steps below to ensure you can access funding:

• Check that you meet the eligibility criteria and terms for the DfE training grant.
• Complete the senior mental health lead training grant form.
• You will received confirmation from the DfE that your application has been successfully received and you can proceed to book your training.

More guidance can be found on the government website here.

Mental Health Lead Training

Our Mental Health Lead Training course has been designed for Designated Senior Mental Health Leads to align with Public Health England's eight principles for promoting children and young people's emotional health and wellbeing.

It will provide you with the strategic perspective and understanding needed to embed a right-time, whole-setting approach to promoting emotional wellbeing and preventing mental health issues for all students, enabling them to better access learning.

The experiential training, complemented with e-learning, is delivered by highly experienced trainers using interactive webinars over a five-week period.

You will explore how best to develop the culture and environment for the whole-school approach appropriate for your setting. The training covers:

• brain development during childhood and adolescence and the incredible opportunities this presents to support learners
• developing in-house capacity to support building emotional resilience of all children and young people
• giving students strategies for dealing with their own mental wellbeing and engaging them with their learning
• looking after the wellbeing of staff.

Grounded with established neuroscience, child development and attachment theory, this training will ensure you are effective in your role, and enable you to develop your team and the resources needed to meet the social and emotional needs of all students, with no one slipping through the net.

Quality assured by the DfE

Thrive is a DfE quality assured provider of Designated Senior Mental Health Lead training for schools and colleges looking to embed a whole-setting approach to emotional health and wellbeing for all children and young people. You can find Thrive listed on page 14 of DfE-assured senior mental health lead training courses - course code SMHL068.

In feedback from the DfE, Thrive was praised for its sessions being 'clearly underpinned by relevant evidence and theory' and providing 'appropriate strategies that senior leaders are able to use to help overcome the challenges faced in leading a whole school or college approach'.

Plus, some of the course resources were specifically identified as being 'most helpful to delegates' and will 'assist them in identifying challenges in their schools/colleges'.

Receive a £100 Thrive training voucher on successful completion

Once you have successfully completed the course, your setting will receive a £100 Thrive training voucher. This can be used to further your knowledge or to introduce a colleague from your setting to the Thrive Approach.

Over to you

The DfE remains committed to offering senior mental health lead training to all eligible state-funded schools and colleges by 2025. Keen to support the mental wellbeing of each young person in your setting? Don't miss out on funding! Click here to book onto Thrive's DfE quality-approved course.