Supporting the NHS' Norfolk Mental Health Support Team

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October 17th 2025

At Wayland Academy we were asked to help the NHS’s Norfolk Mental Health Support Team for schools’ recruitment drive for the upcoming year. We worked as a pilot school for the MHSTS project in 2021 and have continued to build up our relationship with them over time to support our pupils.

Over the Summer holidays, the team used our offices to be able to conduct interventions and assessments with young people from the school and wider community  to allow them to support more pupils than ever and reduce waiting lists further.

There were over 200 applicants in the process. 20 of our pupils attended training and interviewed over 40 participants, to help whittle down to 10! Our pupil’s decisions and judgements were taken into account 50:50 with the interviews conducted by the Mental Health Team staff.

We’re incredibly proud of these 20 pupils who not only showed how amazing our pupils and school are, but have helped ensure the very best new mental health practitioners have been selected for the whole of Norfolk this year. Whether they use them, our pupils use them or others across Norfolk, we know they have played a part in shaping Mental Health Provision for children in Norfolk.

This morning the team presented their certificates of attendance as well as Amazon vouchers as a thank you for their participation in being involved in this amazing project.

Jo Dennison the Clinical and Team leader said:

"Thank you so much for the support that you have provided with our young person event. The pupils were an absolute joy to work with and a credit to the school. They were all very respectful of the candidates and were impressive with how confident they were with asking their questions. They took on board all instructions given and conducted themselves in an exemplary manner. They had taken on board all of the information that was provided at the training event and were committed to not only scoring the candidates but noting any observations that they had made.

 

They provided some really valuable feedback that we will most definitely be taking into account for our final decision making."