Mental health assessments

The government has announced "one of the largest mental health trials in schools, which will see 370 schools contributing evidence about the best mental health support and wellbeing practices for chidren and young people..."

"New mental health assessments for children entering the care system will be piloted in nine areas. Five approaches will be used in the trials – two focusing on increasing awareness in secondary schools through specialist instruction sessions and tools to increase understanding, meanwhile three approaches will include primary schools and take a lighter-touch approach with breathing exercises and mindfulness lessons."

https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/02/04/education-in-the-media-monday-4-february-2019/

Meanwhile the Mental Health Foundation in Scotland is pursuing its `Make it Count` campaign, one of the aims of which is that all pupils will take part in a `wellbeing questionnaire once a term to identify and address problems early by 2020`.

That is, mental ill health prevention in schools is useful in the sense that it may be used as a justification for collecting personal data.

But charities and governments keep forgetting that data collection without informed consent conflicts with human rights.