Please note: This website is best viewed in a modern browser like Chrome, Edge or Firefox. We no longer support Internet Explorer 11.

What is the Wellbeing Service?

What is the Wellbeing Service?

The Tower Hamlets Education Wellbeing Service (THEWS) provides support for young people with mild to moderate mental health difficulties in the borough of Tower Hamlets. We provide 1:1 and group interventions to give young people the skills and tools to help themselves. We work alongside schools and colleges to help ensure a Whole School Approach – where mental wellbeing for students, parents and staff is embedded as a fundamental principle within the school, creating a positive education environment for all. The team is a Trailblazer, one of the first in London to use this model. 

Tower Hamlet’s Service Creation 

We are part of a national project with the goal to increase psychological support for young people. Our team is also known as an MHST (Mental Health Support Team). We started in 2019 with a handful trainees on a course designed specifically for this project. The focus for the project was to provide support for low mood and anxiety for secondary school children, and for anxiety and behavioural challenges for primary school children.  

We have worked closely alongside Step Forward since the start of the project, co-delivering and reporting all our work, and more recently we have also partnered with Docklands Outreach. 

How We Are Doing 

We have grown enormously since 2019 and are now based at 60 schools in the borough, which includes covering nearly all of the secondary schools.  

We continue to work closely with Step Forward and Docklands Outreach in delivering an offer that has grown to include OCD, Eating Difficulties and Emotional Difficulties.  

Our team has expanded and can hold a caseload of up to 200 children and young people at a time. We also run multiple wellbeing workshops which reach over 3,000 young people and their parents in Tower Hamlets a year. 

More Information

You can find out more information about the creation and reviews of these services in the links below. 

Government directive for MHSTs
Early evaluation of MHST projects (National Institute for Health Research)
MHST coverage data from Department of Education
MHST information from NHSE