Empowering Minds Report

Empowering Minds:   The Interplay of Education and Mental Health Support in the Psychiatric Hospital School Classroom

Context

MBHS is a community special school based across the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals which both offer mental health care. The school has the capacity to teach young people aged 4-19 who are inpatients or attending tier 4 day services. All the young people have serious mental illness and most inpatients have had an emergency admission.

The school is funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (part of the Department for Education) with income ported through Southwark Local Authority directly to the school.   The school is inspected by OFSTED under the same inspection framework as any School in England. We currently employ 26 staff- 15 teachers and 11 support staff including teaching assistants and admin.

Purpose of this report

• To audit and describe approaches to teaching and learning in our psychiatric hospital school setting
• To share approaches that work to support learning in the psychiatric hospital school classroom
• To develop our practice further, validating and drawing upon additional training and external input in the future (e.g., work with Trauma-Informed Schools UK)

Please find the full report below.