Mental Health Services

About the Service:

For schools working with Thought-Full, we offer a range of support including short-term interventions for children experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties. Follow the link and complete the form if you would like to request support.

Please note that we can only accept referrals from schools that are working with Thought-Full, see a full list of schools with Thought-Full.

We support school in 3 ways:

1. We support the senior mental health lead (SMHL) in each education setting to introduce or develop their whole school approaches to mental health and emotional wellbeing.
2. We provide one to one evidence-based interventions in schools for mild to moderate mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.
3. We give advice to school staff and liaise with external specialist services, to help children and young people to get the right support and stay in education.

Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in schools are an important strand of the Government’s 2017 Green Paper ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’.

In West Sussex we call our MHSTs ‘Thought-Full’, a name chosen by children and young people. The service is part of the strategic vision for the development of children’s mental health provision across Sussex.

In September 2023 Thought-Full expanded from 6 teams working in Chichester, Bognor, Worthing, Mid-Sussex, and 2 Crawley sites, to a service of 9 teams with the addition of sites in Horsham, Littlehampton, West Worthing and Adur. Launch events were carried out to welcome new schools to the programme.

Each team is commissioned to work with a reach of 7000 to 8000 pupils in primary, secondary, special and alternative settings.

To access our support, speak to the SMHL in your school or email us on [email protected].

Thought-Full is not an emergency service. If you feel you need urgent support, contact the Sussex Mental Health on 0800 0309500 (available 24 hours, 7 days a week). If you or your child are at immediate risk of harm or require medical attention, phone 999 or visit your nearest local accident and emergency department.

One-to-one, targeted support

As part of core function 2, we offer short-term (4 to 10 sessions) interventions for children and young people experiencing mild to moderate difficulties. Complete our online form if you would like to request support. The perspective of the child is crucial to the referral. You can use the ‘Child’s Voice’ document linked in the further information and resources section below to help you do this.

Our interventions are based on cognitive (managing difficult thoughts and the behaviours they lead to) or behavioural ideas (considering changes to behaviours that may keep the difficulty going such as avoidance or withdrawal) and can be delivered 1:1 or in groups.

These interventions rely on a collaborative, goals-based approach. It is therefore important that the young person acknowledges they have a difficulty, and that they are motivated to talk about and work on this.

Thought-Full can support children and young people with:

• Anxiety difficulties including phobias animals, vomit, agoraphobia, separation anxiety, social anxiety, school avoidance and excessive worry (this does not include obsessive compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder)
• Sleep difficulties related to poor sleep routine, behavioural problems, anxiety-based Night-time avoidance behaviours, or problematic thoughts or worries at night.
• Poor eating patterns or diet affected by and/or affecting mood (not eating disorders), low mood, depression and low self-esteem.
• Common behavioural difficulties (4 to 8 years only)