With fears over the growing impact of the pandemic on mental health, the government has finally announced the first tranche of funding for new designated mental health leads (DMHLs) in schools.

The Department for Education (DfE) and Department of Health and Social Care wants every school to have a DMHL by 2025 and pledged in the 2017 mental health Green Paper and their subsequent consultation response (2018) to fund the training required to achieve this.

The announcement this week – which was timed to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week – amounted to £9.5m to support the training of some DMHLs next academic year (DfE, 2021).

Officials say that the funding will be enough to reach “up to 7,800 schools and colleges in England”. There is no indication of when further funding will be available.

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