Mental health: Minister ordered school counselling despite budget advice

Mental health and counseling services for primary school children will only continue until March 2023 by order from the Minister of Education.

The Healthy Happy Minds program was abolished by the Department of Education on Thursday.

More than 19,000 children benefited in the first year of the scheme.

However, a newly published ministry paper reveals that Michelle McIlveen issued two separate ministerial directives to continue the plan.

A ministerial directive is a formal directive from a minister telling a ministry to proceed with spending despite objections from senior civil servants.

According to Ministry of Education statistics, more than 10% of schoolchildren received counseling or therapy in the first grade of the Healthy Happy Minds scheme, which ran from November 2021 to June 2022.

The paper also reveals that education faces a ‘funding shortfall’ of more than £300m just to ‘stop’ in 2023-24.

Introduced in November 2021, it will allow elementary schools to provide counseling and a range of treatments to students in need.

Some schools used the money to pay for student counseling. Others offer games, art, music, or even horse treatment.

But a department’s own equality review to end the scheme reveals that there were two separate ministerial directives from former minister Ms McIlveen to continue it during the 2022-23 school year. I am doing

On 21 June 2022, she issued a ministerial directive to government officials to spend £2.25 million on plans from September to December 2022.

“Advice to [the] A minister at the time said such an allocation would not be affordable given the extent of the inevitable pressures of funding shortages that the education ministry continued to face in fiscal year 2022-23.

Mr McIlveen gave further direction to spend a further £1.75m between January and March 2023.

The plan “does not include a budget for the period from September 2022 to March 2023, and the expenditure was approved by direction of the Minister,” according to a Ministry of Education document.

Funding for the scheme was terminated by the authorities on March 31, in an attempt to save money given the pressure on the education budget, in the absence of ministers due to the bankruptcy of Stormont executives.

An experienced therapist who has worked in many schools as part of Healthy Happy Minds said she was “devastated” by the end of the plan.

Katie Sparham told BBC News NI that she has helped students who have suffered trauma, anxiety, bullying and bereavement.

“You also work with parents and teachers, adults, and the people they’re attached to in their lives,” she said.

“School principals are completely devastated and devastated.

“I just got a message from one of them saying that some schools are trying to raise money to enroll people.

“Teachers and parents were left behind.

“They have developed a system of referrals at school, so we have a waiting list.

“So there was hope that it would last so that we could see the next waiting children, but suddenly it was gone.”

She said it was “like getting kicked in the stomach” when she heard the plan was ending.

“We therapists were the last to be told,” she said.

“We are told that everything is based on ratings and we have worked hard to accept all ratings.

“We did everything we could, but in the end it was a purely financial decision.

“I’m mad at my kids. Absolutely mad at my kids.”

Funding for the Engage scheme, which helped more than 400 schools hire additional teachers to provide extra help to some students after the Covid-19 pandemic, also ended Thursday.

A budget for the Stormont sector for 2023-2024 has not yet been set, but Northern Ireland’s financial watchdog has warned of significant cuts.