Lewisham schools have secured a bid for two mental health support teams from January.

The teams are expected to reduce pressure on Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the borough.

Education cuts have resulted in mental health services in schools being dramatically reduced or axed altogether, alongside rising anxiety and self-harm in young people.

The Government published a green paper for transforming children and young people’s mental health in 2017, which included plans for establishing new mental health support trailblazer teams (MHSTs).

The MHSTs, jointly delivered with the Department for Education (DfE), are intended to provide early intervention on some mental health issues such as moderate anxiety or low mood.

Brenda Bartlett, deputy director of CAMHS community service, told Lewisham’s children and young people’s select committee the news last week but said only two schools will have access to the support from January while year-long training in undertaken.

The teams will train at Kings College London for the first year where they will be “supported by several layers of more experienced clinicians”.

Ms Bartlett said: “The original trailblazers were now over a year ago and advice from NHS England has been to begin with two schools.

“The trainees over the next year will be trained and will move out to being able to support more schools.

“From memory, I believe in the second year we will roll out to 19 schools. The first year is very much a training year.

“These trainees are completely untrained when they start in January, it would not be safe or fair to be allocating them work they couldn’t do yet.

“The schools understand that they are going to give more than they get back in the first year.”

It is believed the teams could increase demand on community CAMHS initially because of the “increase in awareness” around mental health issues.

But in the long-term the teams could significantly reduce the pressure on children’s mental health services as a result of early intervention.

“From January I think we can start to look at trying to deflect the need for referral to CAMHS for children who, if seen earlier perhaps, could be prevented from deteriorating.

“It won’t deal with children who have the beginnings of severe mental illness but if we’re talking about children suffering the beginnings of anxiety and depression, which is the case for very many children, I think that would be most helpful,” Ms Bartlett said.

The deputy director added that expectations will have to be “managed”.

“The school becomes very excited about the fact that they’ve got this team and says please can you come and help all our children that are struggling – so we are going to have to manage expectations.

“I don’t personally anticipate a huge increase in demand, but equally if you put in greater resource you encourage people to make very appropriate referrals.

“But the longer-term payback is potentially enormous.”