Mental Health Support

Children and Young People's Mental Health Services (CYPMHS)

Children and Young People's Mental Health Services (CYPMHS) is a service for children and young people under 18 and their families and is delivered by Leeds Community Healthcare. You may also see the term children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) used.

CYPMHS is a specialist mental health service for children and young people. Our staff are highly trained in a range of different assessment techniques and evidence-based therapies. Staff work closely in teams so that we can offer services tailored to the needs of the children, young people and families we see. Our services include Community CYPMHS, Children and Young People’s Eating Disorder Service, Mental Health Crisis Team and specialist service for learning disability.

Find out more here: Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust - Home

Red Kite View 

Mental Health in-patient unit for Children and Young People. 

Our Children and Young People’s Mental Health Inpatient Service (or CYPMHS). This is a specialist inpatient mental health service for children and young people aged 13 -18 and their families based across West Yorkshire. The service is provided by  Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT). 

Find out more here: Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust -Children and Young Peoples’ Mental Health Service (CYPMHS) inpatient unit for West Yorkshire (leedsandyorkpft.nhs.uk)

Infant Mental Health – Early Relationships Matter

Delivered by Leeds Community Healthcare the service supports families who are struggling with early attachment relationships to make sure that every baby in Leeds has the best start in life.  They aim to promote emotional wellbeing in infants by supporting care givers to build secure relationships with their babies.  They support parents to be and caregivers from pregnancy through to children who are school aged.  

Find out more here: LCH Infant Mental Health Service (leedscommunityhealthcare.nhs.uk)

Adult Services (over 18s)

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) is the main provider of specialist mental health and learning disability services for adults in Leeds. The full offer for adults, including the Third sector offer is available on the MindWell website: Home - MindWell (mindwell-leeds.org.uk)

Kooth

Online counselling and emotional well-being platform for 10–18-year-olds with instant access to counselling support. 

Find out more here: Home - Kooth

Time for young people Leeds 

A  community-based early emotional and mental health support service for children and young people (started July 2024) provided by the Children's Society. 

This service provides early emotional and mental health support to children and young people in Leeds, specifically those who need alternative support outside of school or NHS services.

Find out more here: Time for young people, Leeds | The Children's Society (childrenssociety.org.uk)

Teen Connect

Delivered by third sector organisation, Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service. A freephone helpline, text service and online for 11–18-year-olds who are in crisis.

Find out more here: Leeds Survivor-Led Crisis Service » Teen Connect (lslcs.org.uk)

Safezone

Delivered by third sector organisation, Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service. Crisis support by phone, online and face to face.

Find out more here: Leeds Survivor-Led Crisis Service » Safe Zone (lslcs.org.uk)

Night Owls

Delivered by Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service. Confidential support line, 8pm–8am every night for all children, young people, and parents/carers in West Yorkshire – Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, and Wakefield.

Find out more here: Night OWLS - MindMate

In addition, children and young people with a severe or profound hearing loss in Leeds can access the nationally commissioned specialised service Deaf Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) is delivered by Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. 

Find out more here: Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust -Deaf Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Deaf CAMHS) – National (leedsandyorkpft.nhs.uk)

There is a wide range of support available in schools, some schools commission external providers as well as employing their own support staff. Children and young people within alternative provision will be able to access support delivered by the school they are on roll at and any additional support at the alternative provision. 

The Social Emotional Mental Health (SEMH) support pathway, utilising a Graduated Approach. for state-funded schools in Leeds for children aged 4 to 18 describes support available: 

Schools-pathway-document-DIGITAL-DOC.pdf (mindmate.org.uk)

The services that are centrally funded but deliver at a school level are:

Mental Health Support Team 

(known in Leeds as the MindMate Support Team) 

The service, delivered by Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, offers emotional wellbeing support for young people up to 19 years old in education settings across Leeds. The aim of the services is to strengthen and improve early intervention for mild-moderate mental health difficulties in addition to, and working with, existing mental health support available in education settings and the wider community. 

The MindMate Support Team work alongside education settings to offer strategic support around developing a Whole Setting Approach to emotional wellbeing. This involves working collaboratively with education settings to ensure emotional wellbeing is a priority, and that children and young people are supported to thrive in education.  The service works alongside the education settings mental health leads and the wider staff teams to embed this culture via offering staff training, workshops, groups, and a reflective group space (Solution Focused Support) for education staff as well as offering a consultation model to consider CYP’s individual needs to create a shared plan of support. 

The MindMate Support Team are funded through the NHS England Mental Health Support Team, so do not cover the full local authority at present with a phased roll out in place. 

For more information visit: MindMate Support Team - MindMate’ 

Mindmate Wellbeing

School cluster-based mental health support (also previously known as TaMHS). Provides consultation for professionals and face-to-face support for young people as well as broader access to other services in the cluster. This can usually be accessed where the child or young person attends or is on role at, through the young person’s school or MindMate SPA. 

The referral process to access support involves a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding need and identifying support to meet need, the Mindmate Wellbeing service offers counselling to children and young people but this is often accessed alongside other cluster support, such as Family Support, to meet the needs of the whole family.

MindMate Friendly and Mindmate Champion

MindMate Friendly promotes and develops evidence-based best practice for Social, Emotional & Mental Health (SEMH) for all schools, settings, and FE providers. A MindMate Friendly setting will be required to audit current provision with the aim to create spaces where all pupils/ students feel safe to talk about how they feel, and staff feel confident that they can respond and signpost effectively. A MindMate Champion setting will plan and develop a case study on one aspect of your Mental Health focus. 

The MindMate Lessons teaching resource is an emotional literacy curriculum. The lessons are designed to fit into your PSHE curriculum. The resource focuses on key skills (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills), as well as ensuring the format is easy to deliver and tailor to your pupils. 

Leeds Resilience Programme 

Primary (Keystage 2), Secondary and Post 16

The programme consists of sessions delivered to a group of pupils. It is focused on 5  areas of resilience (Belonging, Core, Coping, Learning and Basic) as well as  incorporating several issue-based topics.

Youth Mental Health First Aid Training

This training is an evidence-based course certified by Mental Health First Aid England.
This course will provide mental health first aid skills, it won't teach you to be a therapist, but we will teach you to appropriately listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis - and even potentially stop a crisis from happening.

The course includes: 

• Session 1: Youth Mental Health First Aid
• Session 2: Depression and anxiety
• Session 3: Suicide and psychosis
• Session 4: Self-harm and eating disorders

My Health My School Pupil Perception Survey

The My Health My School survey asks pupils/ students in years 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 & 11, questions to generate vital information on their wellbeing and health behaviours. Separate surveys for Post 16 and provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are also available. The perception data allows you to tailor interventions and adapt teaching and curriculum. The survey comprises of a range of questions on the eight themes, one of which is social, emotional and mental health.

Senior Mental Health Lead Training

The course is led by highly experienced local education and children's services professionals alongside youth mental health qualified trainers. It will cover all eight of the learning outcomes put forward by the DfE; Leadership and management; Identifying need and monitoring impact of interventions; Targeted support and appropriate referrals; Staff development; Creating an ethos and environment; Enabling the student voice; Working with parents, families, and carers and Curriculum, teaching and learning.

School MindMate Ambassadors Programme

This programme helps pupils to understand the how to plan activities to help your school and setting to become a healthier, happier place. The programme aims to help pupils to become more confident with their role and enhance their skills to monitor and improve SEMH in their schools.

Positive Playtime Practice Programme

This programme focuses on the unstructured times of the school day and transforms it to engage pupils into the 5 ways to wellbeing approach, boosts engagement, happiness, social interaction, physical activity and continues learning out of the classroom, as well as decreasing isolation, poor behaviour and low mood.

The cluster model is joint funded by Leeds City Council, ICB and schools, they are arranged around a family of schools who pool finances to provide early help services. 

Purpose of a cluster

The core purpose of clusters is to identify support for those families, children and young people most in need of help and, to ensure they are offered the right intervention at the right time, by the right people as early as possible in the life of a problem or situation, in line with the Children & Young People’s Plan (CYPP) and the Leeds Early Help Strategies. 

Clusters have a key role to ensure children and young people have positive educational outcomes in line with the 3 A’s strategy: attendance, attainment, and achievement.  

The cluster enables local settings and services to work together effectively to improve outcomes for children, young people and their families. They build capacity to improve the delivery of preventative and targeted services to meet local needs.

The clusters are a central point of contact for schools to access advice, consultation and support to a wide range of services within the city.

What do clusters provide?

There are 21 geographical early help clusters who all provide family support and SEMH support for young people. Each cluster meet the needs of their schools and communities as such having differing additionality such as SALT, CYPNET parenting courses, Educational Psychology and much more. 

There is an additional city wide cluster that supports the SILC school, they have a great expertise in children with complex needs and other support and consultation to the other clusters around SEND and complex needs.

Read more info here