A COUNCILLOR has said she is ‘seething’ that plans to station mental health experts in schools are only being trialled in Oxford.

In December the government gifted Oxfordshire agencies with £5.4m for a trailblazing pilot scheme, to slash NHS waiting times for children’s mental health services.

Part of the money will be spent on basing 16 new mental health practitioners in schools, reaching 16,000 pupils – but the government has only allocated enough money to cover Oxford.

Speaking at an Oxfordshire County Council education scrutiny meeting last week, Hilary Hibbert-Biles said she was ‘absolutely seething’ that the scheme is not more widespread.

READ MORE: What else will the £5m be spent on?

The Chipping Norton councillor, who sits on the council’s health scrutiny committee, said: "I just feel, while it's good to run a pilot anywhere, to [invest] £5m into one area is actually a total disgrace.

"There is not only deprivation in Oxford city, it's throughout Oxfordshire and certainly in rural areas it's a different type of deprivation - the facilities anybody has [access to] are far far less than in the city.”

Deborah Bell, the council’s head of service for learner engagement, stressed that the hope had been for funding to cover every school in the entire county, but the funding bid was 'halved.'

She said at the meeting last Monday: "The pilot money is for a year, and the aspiration is that the new resources will have such a positive effect on young people and children's mental health, that the Department of Health will release funds across the whole county.

“We now have the opportunity to make a better case when we can use the Oxford city pilot as proof of [the project's] success.

“The intention is certainly that after 12 months, funds will be applied for to roll out across the entire county."

The 16 practitioners will be based at Oxford schools and are currently being trained at Reading University, with a view to start around Easter.

Ms Bell did not name the schools during the meeting but said it is hoped that the 'enhanced provision' will contribute to 'significantly reduced' waiting times for services.

She added: "This is an entirely new resource, it's not a re-badging or rebranding.”

Mrs Hibbert-Biles told the committee she had spoken to several families who had taken their children out of school, due to lack of mental health support.

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She added: "I'm fed up, after all my years on the council, of being told that Abingdon, Banbury and Oxford are the areas of greater need. The need is spread far and wide."

A governor who spoke at the meeting said: "I work in a school where senior management put an immense amount of effort and time to cover for the gaps in CAMHS [child and adolescent mental health services].

"It's depressing to find out that it's going to be another year until this [scheme] will be coming into a more rural environment.

"All governors are desperate to see kids in school on a regular basis, but most kids with long-term persistent absence have a CAMHS problem as well.

"Schools are filling a gap - a huge amount of senior management spend time dealing with issues when there is no support in the wider community. That needs to be resolved rapidly."

Ms Bell said the council is 'very much alive' to the roles teaching staff are having to juggle.

She said: "Staff in schools are increasingly upskilling themselves with regards to managing less secure mental health in children and young people."

ALSO READ: Worries over children's mental health after absence and self-harm stats

Councillor Emma Turnbull suggested the committee could ask the council’s cabinet to reshuffle its budget, to better prioritise mental health provision.

The committee discussed how mental health had a poor impact on attendance, and Rose Hill and Littlemore councillor Gill Sanders said more help is ‘desperately needed’ to tackle the issue.

She said when she worked at Cheney School in Headington, the school benefited from a link worker employed by the council, who would actively track down students who were not in class and bring them back.

Mrs Sanders added: "They knew where these youngsters would be hanging about and they weren't rough or tough with them, they would build up a relationship.

"That really worked, and we lost them. I think that was money very well spent, and we probably saved a lot of youngsters from getting themselves into trouble."