The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report 2024 clearly highlights continually declining levels of mental health among our children and young people and that all those involved in children’s lives, need to come together more to support our young people and to tackle this endemic. Effective collaboration between parents and trusts can be a significant part of this, supporting children and young people in our schools to thrive and to be better able to manage mental health in a positive way.

In this session for Forum Strategy members, we welcome mental health charity Place2Be to explore how as trust leaders, we can build long-lasting and impactful relationships with parents around children’s mental health, ensuring the support our young people access in education settings, is complemented by the home environment. We will discuss the barriers and enablers to building relationships with parents and explore how tools such as the MindForward Alliance’s parent toolkit can be helpful. During the session, we will open up discussions with you as trust leaders to capture your views and experiences and to identify promising practice that could form future case studies in this area.