In Wiltshire, the rates of social, emotional and mental health needs and autism spectrum disorder in primary school-aged children are high, and there is increasing demand on specialist services. This is similar to national trends.

Early intervention is a major goal of public health policy, cutting across health and education sectors. It is widely recognised that schools offer a convenient setting for intervention. Primary school staff currently do not have access to additional specialist input for those children who do not meet the threshold for any particular service. For this cohort of children, a multidisciplinary team approach that considers the complex interactions between mental health, special educational needs and autism spectrum disorder may help school staff to respond appropriately and with confidence to a child’s needs.

The Division of Clinical Psychology (2011) suggest that multidisciplinary teams using formulation-based approaches can support staff with service users who are perceived as complex and challenging. The use of digital technology is an attractive option for Wiltshire, to facilitate multidisciplinary team working in a rural part of the country by reducing travel burdens and costs for professionals. Less is known about multidisciplinary team working and a digitally-mediated way of working in services for children and young people, which the SOMEHOW project aims to address.

SOMEHOW: Social, emOtional and MEntal Health service using technOlogy in Wiltshire

The SOMEHOW project aims to develop and evaluate a new approach for responding to emerging social, emotional and mental health needs in primary school settings, making best use of digital technology and multidisciplinary team working.

This project explores a social model to support children and young people, by assessing whether SOMEHOW can support primary school staff with effective strategies.

The SOMEHOW Process

• This project supports a cluster of five primary schools in Tidworth, Wiltshire. Participating schools have received training in the Thrive Approach (a trademarked programme developed by Fronting the Challenge Ltd).

• This project brings together a multidisciplinary team consisting of professionals from Wiltshire Children's Services: Behaviour Support Service, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, Educational Psychology Service, Specialist Special Educational Needs Service, and Speech and Language Therapy Team.

• The multidisciplinary team meet bi-weekly via videoconferencing technology to formulate specialised action plans for children and young people (aged 4-10 years).

• School staff and parents/carers deliver the action plan in primary school settings and at home.

• The multidisciplinary team review the plan after three months, and up to two additional times within a year.

Project details

• The SOMEHOW project is a collaboration between the Centre for Applied Autism Research (CAAR) and Wiltshire Council.

• This mixed-method, quasi-experimental study applies the Rationale, Objectives, Appraisal, Monitoring, Evaluation and Feedback (ROAMEF) framework from the HM Treasury’s (2019) Green Book and the Systems Change Evaluation Framework (Latham, 2014) to guide service development and evaluation.

• The overall aim of the project is to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of SOMEHOW.

Phase 1

This phase uses qualitative methods to identify what needs to change and what constitutes good service provision from the perspectives of professionals, school staff, parents/carers, and children and young people.

Phase 2

This phase involves conducting a systematic review of digitally-enhanced professional team meetings for improving outcomes.

Phase 3

This phase involves conducting a pre/post evaluation of digital team meetings using quantitative and qualitative methods.

We have chosen to compare SOMEHOW with other primary school settings trained in the Thrive Approach. This will allow us to examine whether a multidisciplinary team has additional impact above that of a whole-school approach to emotional wellbeing (Thrive Approach) on school-level statistics.

Phase 4

This phase will further develop the digital meetings or evaluate other digital approaches for early identification and intervention.

If this pilot project indicates feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of SOMEHOW, it has the potential to draw together recommendations for future research and practice.

Project objectives

• To examine the feasibility and acceptability of SOMEHOW.
• To examine the effectiveness of SOMEHOW, specifically for the primary school staff and the children and young people involved.
• To examine the effectiveness of SOMEHOW for school-level outcomes, compared to the Thrive Approach.
• To examine the economic outcomes of using technology for services.

Project Team

• Professor Mark Brosnan, Principle Investigator
• Dr Ailsa Russell
• Lauren Jones, PhD Student