In developing Mental Health Support Teams, NHS Barnsley CCG is seeking to offer a single contract to an organisation(s) that will ensure the children and young people within the borough are able to access appropriate, timely support for their emotional health and wellbeing to further improve their life outcomes.

The new service will cover the provision of three MHST’s, two focusing on primary school-aged children (one of these being a Trailblazer team as per the Green Paper published in December 2017) and the third team being a well-established team known as MindSpace, which focuses on supporting the pupils within the 10 Secondary Schools within the borough.

The purpose of all three MHSTS is to support children and young people with mild-to-moderate mental health and emotional wellbeing needs within their educational setting.

The aims of the MHSTs are:

— to provide extra capacity for early intervention and ongoing help within educational settings;

— to reduce health inequalities and vulnerabilities of children and young people who are living within Barnsley’s most deprived wards;

— to provide support earlier for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health and emotional wellbeing in educational settings;

— to reduce stigma and normalise mental health and emotional wellbeing, whilst addressing the barriers for children and young people accessing support;

— to enable Barnsley’s children and young people to be able to easily access, when they need it, the appropriate support for their mental health and emotional wellbeing;

— to ensure integrated emotional health and wellbeing support is available to children and young people all year round.

The three MHST’s will work together and become a key partner in Barnsley’s CYP Emotional health and wellbeing support system.

The contract will be for a term of 3 years with the opportunity to extend for 2 years subject to mutual agreement between the successful bidder and the authority. The maximum term of contract is consequently 5 years.