What is the MHST?

The Mental Health Support Team (MHST) aims to provide an easily accessed service for pupils from primary to year 13 who may be experiencing a range of mild to moderate difficulties with their mental health.

The teams are based within education settings and if you would like to know if a school is covered by an MHST then please contact the school SENCO or the MHST direct on the numbers provided.

Each MHST consists of 14 team members, and include:

  • Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHP)
  • Mental Health Practitioners (MHP)
  • Senior Mental Health Practitioners (SMHP)
  • Clinical Project Lead

Each school is covered by an EMHP, a mental health practitioner and a senior mental health practitioner. We also have friendly admin staff who you are likely to speak to first if you ring up.

Difficulties the MHST can help with:

  • Low mood
  • Worry 
  • Anxiety (simple phobias, separation anxiety and health anxiety)
  • Panic episodes
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
  • Single episodes of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
  • Thoughts of self-harm and injury (non-life-threatening self-harm/injury – basic harm reduction, assessing risk and management advice)

What do the MHST do?

Assessments with young people and families to understand more about their difficulties.

  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which is usually on a one-to-one basis
  • CBT informed group work
  • Psychoeducation sessions to help young people and families understand more about mental health

As well as working with you and your child, we also work with education teams to develop a whole school approach to mental health, this means that we offer training, webinars, complete assemblies and support with the PSHE curriculum.

If you have noticed your child is feeling frequently sad, worried or anxious and feel they may need support from our team, please speak to a member of staff at your child's school, who will refer you directly to the service. We have regular consultations with our schools to support a whole school approach to mental health and discuss potential requests for support into the service.

A request for support has been made, what next?

Once we have received a request for support, we will look at the information and decide whether it would be best for the young person be seen by MHST or if another service would best meet their needs e.g. Clinical Psychology,  Educational Psychology, Learning Disability Team or Eating  Disorder Team.

We will then contact you via telephone to arrange an appointment.

What happens when we see you?


The first appointment with us is often called an initial assessment or screening, for both your child and yourself. This is a safe space where you can talk to us about the worries and difficulties that your child is experiencing, and we will talk to you about the ways that either our team or another service can help and support you and your child. 

This appointment can take place virtually or face to face and we usually complete therapeutic sessions in your child’s  education setting. If we all think that help from MHST would be appropriate, we will talk about who would be best to do this and we will involve you in the planning of your child’s care as well as decisions about discharging them from our service.
We use questionnaires and other rating scales to form part of our assessments, to understand your difficulties and to see whether we have been able to make a difference.

Do I have a say?

As part of Lancashire and South Cumbria Foundation Trust, ELCAS works in partnership with you to ensure that your needs and views are always at the heart of what we do. It is important to us that we hear what you think. This is so we can improve the service we offer you, but more importantly so that you can play an active role in the services and care that we offer you.

We will communicate with you in a way that suits you best and in a way that is clear and understandable. We will always treat you with dignity and respect. 

If we get it wrong, please tell us. This will help us improve things for you and other young people who use our service.

Need to contact us?

If you need to contact us, please call the MHST 
administrative team: