BABCP submission to the consultation on priorities for the Early Years, Children, Young People and Education Committee
The British Association for Cognitive and Behavioural Psychotherapies (BABCP) is the lead organisation for Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (CBT) in the UK and Ireland. Our mission is to support the development of CBT, and those who deliver it, to improve the mental health of people across the UK and Ireland.
As a professional body with over 27,000 members, and around 500 members in Wales, we are committed to promoting the highest standards of CBT practice, training, and supervision. We hold all our members to the highest professional standards, which they commit to by adhering to our Standards of Conduct, Performance, and Ethics. We hold the CBT Register UK and Ireland jointly with the Association for Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (AREBT). The Register is accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) and is the only officially recognised register of BABCP and AREBT accredited CBT therapists, supervisors and trainers. Our Register also includes sections for other NHS England-recognised occupations using CBT informed approaches. These are Evidence-Based Parent Trainers, (EBPTs) Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWPs), Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs) and Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs). These registration schemes are approved by NHS England.
Given the nature of our organisation, we will be focusing on areas related to the provision of mental health.
Please outline in the boxes below what you see as the priorities for the Committee over the next 4 years.
We would like the Committee to focus on strengthening and expanding the provision of evidence-based mental health support for children and young people in Wales, particularly the below areas:
Expanding access to evidence-based psychotherapies such as CBT in schools and community settings
Evidence consistently shows that around 50 percent of lifetime mental health conditions emerge before age 14, and approximately 75 percent by the mid-20s, underscoring the importance of prevention and early intervention in schools as well as the community: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/statistics/children-young-people-statistics
We believe that the Committee should focus on investigating the potential for the Government to invest in evidence-based psychological therapies, such as CBT, as recommended by Matrics Cymru and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as an intervention and often treatment of choice for addressing various conditions, including anxiety disorders, depression, OCD, eating disorders, personality disorders, amongst other conditions.
We recognise the work that the Welsh Government has done in recent years, including the roll out of the Whole School Approach to Emotional and Mental Wellbeing (WSAEMWB) which includes having named Emotional health and wellbeing leads in schools (https://www.gov.wales/framework-embedding-whole-school-approach-emotional-and-mental-wellbeing) While this is a great step to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing; we believe children in Wales will benefit from the incorporation of specific Mental Health Support Teams (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/686d3640a08d3a3ca3b678de/Transforming_children_and_young_people_mental_health_programme_2025.pdf) in schools, which consist of different professionals such as fully trained and registered low intensity CBT practitioners, similar to Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) in NHS England providing early, preventative mental health support for children and young people. Providing early-intervention evidence-based care in the community and in schools for mild to moderate conditions could prevent some of these issues escalating. The Welsh Government should consider a similar model for Wales.
Investing in the workforce that can deliver evidence-based approaches in schools
Staff in educational settings play a role in early identification, support and referral. Embedding mental health professionals with appropriate skills such as CBT and CBT-informed approaches in education settings ensures delivery of evidence-based interventions earlier and at the point of need (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/promoting-and-supporting-mental-health-and-wellbeing-in-schools-and-colleges).
Everyone working in an educational setting should have skills to recognise mental health issues and signpost to appropriate care. In the same way that all staff have safeguarding responsibilities to recognise, signpost and refer, whether or not they actively provide interventions to children. This approach would make it more likely that problems are identified and addressed sooner.
It is important to protect children and young people by ensuring that the appropriate services are available, that there are adequate resources, and that evidence-based interventions are provided by trained and accredited or registered professionals.
Using evidence-based methods of delivering care would also benefit children and young people more. While all interventions should be delivered by appropriately trained, accredited and registered health care professionals, a stepped-care model ensures that difficulties are addressed at the appropriate intensity for the presenting concerns. For example, providing support and interventions for mild to moderate difficulties at low intensity with more complex needs referred for higher intensity interventions, to CAMHS or specialist services.
Currently, our members in Wales witness children and young people who can’t go to school because of high levels of anxiety that don’t meet the threshold for CAMHS referral. This has an impact on children themselves, but also parents and schools. Similarly, neurodiverse children or those with social anxiety can struggle to manage the daily demands of school without receiving adequate support. If in turn, there were practitioners in schools with adequate training and accreditation to identify mental health concerns and deliver evidence based mental health support, such as CBT, these children may be able to continue attending school and an escalation of the mental health issue and a CAMHS referral can be prevented.
As per our point above, introducing CBT-informed approaches in schools and the community delivered by adequately trained practitioners such as Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs), and Education Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) would really help to deliver the evidence-based mental health support that children in Wales need.
To achieve this, there is a need to invest in specific, BABCP accredited CBT training to work with children and young people.
Investing in data and reporting mechanisms
While local authorities report on overall outcomes (average improvement) of children receiving counselling in schools (https://www.gov.wales/counselling-children-and-young-people-september-2023-august-2024-html), this isn’t detailed enough. Outcome monitoring is essential to understand the presenting issues, whether needs are being met, and learning lessons to inform future service delivery. The School Health Research Network (SHRN) has a database but it isn’t efficient as the data is not analysed quickly enough to be of use for those supporting children and young people (https://www.shrn.org.uk/national-data-and-reports/).
The Government should invest in developing an accessible database which allow schools to submit information in an anonymised way and include mechanisms for understanding and responding to the data collected . It should include school area, county and cluster, year group, presenting difficulty. The Government should also ensure that there is a mechanism built in for data sharing beyond their own school to the school cluster, as well as including the data of pupils that may be on medical leave and those educated other than at school to -e.g. home schooling-. If the government supports schools to obtain, share and learn from this information, it would help to identify unmet needs, make investment in resources more effective, and could lead to earlier roll-out of evidence-based interventions such as CBT to meet those needs.
