Parents will not automatically be told if children are suicidal under schools mental health scheme
Parents will not be automatically informed if their children are assessed as being suicidal under a new government-backed scheme being rolled out in schools from Thursday.
Pupils will be invited to complete online mental health check-ins, in which a "wellbeing score" is calculated based on their answers, under the £5 million mental health programme being launched in secondary schools.
If a pupil's answers indicate they are at high risk of suicide or self-harm, their school will be alerted, with personal wellbeing reports provided on each student.
However, parents – who do not need to give their permission for their children to enroll in the programme, which is being funded and run by the Govox Wellbeing platform – will not be automatically notified if children are flagged as being at high risk.
Instead, once a student has been flagged to those responsible for monitoring the system, schools can respond using internal pastoral care networks and pass the information to parents if necessary.
Initiative backed by Boris Johnson
The programme is being rolled out free of charge in up to 1,000 state secondary schools in its first year and aims to combat rising teenage suicide rates, which have increased by nearly 50 per cent in the past decade.
The platform was developed alongside medical doctors, NHSX, the digital arm of the health service, and Kings College London.
Its delivery is being supported by Papyrus, a suicide prevention charity, the Mental Health Foundation and Local Mind, which will provide support to students if required, and the scheme has the backing of Boris Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary.
Molly Kingsley, the founder of parents' group UsForThem, said: "We welcome anything that is intended to bring down suicide rates and child mental health problems, but we should not have a scheme that freezes parents out on such a critical issue. What we'd want to aim for is collaboration and partnership on matters like this."
‘You can’t work without the parents’
Richard Lucas, who founded Govox Wellbeing in 2018, said it would be "incredibly difficult" technologically to automatically inform parents of their children's answers on the platform. "Students might want to share something they don't want their parents to see," he added.
However Geraint Edwards, the headmaster of a Hertfordshire school that will be taking part in the programme, said parents of his students would be informed if their children are flagged as potentially suicidal "as the norm".
"My staff are on the phone to parents every day… so if something flags up, 99 per cent of the time parents [will be] informed," he said. "You can't work without the parents." Mr Edwards said the programme was a "great idea".
