Available Services

Evidence-Informed Early Intervention and the stepped help model

Our tiered model of support is grounded in evidence-informed early intervention, drawing upon the principles of Low-Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LI-CBT).

Rather than waiting for difficulties to reach more intense support, the model focuses on identifying concerns early, providing practical tools, and promoting resilience before problems become more complex.

Not every learner experiencing emotional distress, anxiety, low mood or difficulties coping with everyday life will meet the threshold for specialist mental health services such as CAMHS, NHS Talking Therapies or secondary mental health services and beyond. However, not meeting the criteria for clinical intervention should never mean that a learner is left without support.

Many learners benefit from timely, evidence-informed interventions that help them understand what they are experiencing, develop practical coping strategies and strengthen resilience.

Early intervention can improve wellbeing, increase engagement with learning and enable learners to continue progressing in education.

Our tiered model has been designed to bridge this important gap. It enables education providers to offer structured, preventative support for learners experiencing emerging difficulties, while ensuring that those requiring specialist assessment or treatment are identified promptly and referred through appropriate clinical pathways.

Our approach begins with a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment, informed by a cognitive and behavioural framework, to develop a holistic understanding of each learner's strengths, needs and presenting difficulties.

This includes exploring how thoughts, emotions, behaviours, physical symptoms, relationships, environmental influences and wider social circumstances interact to affect wellbeing, engagement and educational outcomes.

We also consider protective factors alongside any risks to self, from others or to others, ensuring that concerns are identified and responded to appropriately.

Professional assessment is complemented by the use of routine outcome measures commonly used across healthcare and community services, together with cognitive formulation, to determine the most appropriate level of support within the stepped care pathway.

Where higher levels of need are identified, clear referral, monitoring and escalation pathways ensure that learners are connected promptly and safely with the most appropriate statutory, NHS or specialist services.

At the same time, coordinated support within the education setting can continue wherever appropriate, helping learners remain engaged while accessing external intervention.

Wellbeing, Mental Health and Inclusion Consultancy services

Priority Wellbeing and Mental Health UK CIC works in partnership with education providers to strengthen the systems that support learner wellbeing, mental health, engagement and success. Rather than focusing on individual services in isolation, we take a whole-system approach, helping organisations understand how different teams, processes and pathways work together to support learners throughout their educational journey.

We review the effectiveness of support systems across areas such as wellbeing, mental health, safeguarding, attendance, additional learning support, student services and external partnerships. Through consultation, service mapping and system reviews, we help providers identify strengths, gaps, duplication and barriers that may prevent learners from accessing timely support.

Our work explores whether support is primarily reactive and crisis-driven, or whether there are strong preventative and early intervention approaches in place. We examine how learners are identified, assessed, supported and referred, how reasonable adjustments are implemented, and whether staff have clear pathways and confidence to respond appropriately to emerging concerns.

A key part of our consultancy is helping services work together more effectively. We review communication, referral processes, escalation pathways and partnership working to reduce silos and create more integrated support systems. This helps ensure learners experience coordinated support rather than being passed between services or facing unnecessary delays.

By combining systems thinking, evidence-informed practice and an understanding of the challenges facing education providers, we help organisations build accessible, joined-up and learner-centred support systems that improve wellbeing, attendance, participation and outcomes.

Our goal is simple: to help providers create integrated, learner-centred support systems that improve engagement, attendance, wellbeing and outcomes, while reducing pressure on staff and specialist services.

Areas of review include:

Wellbeing and mental health strategy
Student support pathways and referral systems
Early intervention and prevention models
Attendance and re-engagement approaches
Neurodiversity and reasonable adjustments
Safeguarding and wellbeing integration
Multi-agency and partnership working
Student voice and co-production
Service audits, gap analysis and improvement planning

Staff training and workforce development

We recognise that mental health difficulties rarely exist in isolation.

Anxiety, low mood, stress and emotional distress are often interconnected with wider factors such as financial pressures, potential addiitonal learning needs, housing difficulties, caring responsibilities, social isolation, physical health, family circumstances and challenges within the learning environment.

Our approach begins with a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment, informed by a cognitive and behavioural framework, to develop a holistic understanding of the learner's strengths, needs and presenting difficulties. This includes exploring how thoughts, emotions, behaviours, physical symptoms and environmental factors may be interacting to affect wellbeing, engagement and educational outcomes. We also consider protective factors and assess any risks to self, from others, or to others, ensuring that concerns are identified and responded to appropriately.

We utilise routine outcome measures commonly used across healthcare and community services, alongside professional assessment and formulation, to help identify the most appropriate level of support. Where learners do not require specialist mental health intervention, providers can offer evidence-informed, low-intensity support, psychoeducation and guided self-help strategies that promote resilience, improve coping skills and support positive behavioural change.

Using a preventative and whole-learner approach, we help providers identify concerns early, understand the wider factors contributing to distress and develop coordinated responses that address both mental health needs and the practical barriers affecting a learner's ability to thrive.

Clear referral, monitoring and escalation pathways ensure that learners requiring specialist intervention are identified promptly and supported safely while accessing external services.

By combining comprehensive assessment, cognitive formulation, routine outcome monitoring and integrated pathways of care, providers can create more accessible, joined-up and effective systems of support that improve learner wellbeing, engagement and long-term outcomes.

Learners Insights and co-production

The people using a service are often the people best placed to help improve it. Services are at their strongest when they are accessible, responsive at the point of need and designed around the real experiences of the learners they support. As professionals, we also need to create opportunities to reflect, listen and learn from those experiences so that they can meaningfully shape the way support is designed and delivered.

We see many examples of good practice across education, including learner surveys, focus groups, student unions and student representation. These all play an important role in understanding learner experiences. We believe their greatest value comes when learners become genuine partners in shaping the services designed to support them.

For those voices to truly influence change, young people need psychologically safe opportunities, trusting relationships and meaningful structures that enable them to contribute to decision-making and the development of solutions. We are interested not only in what learners experience, but why they experience services in the way they do, what helps them engage with support and what makes the greatest difference when support works well.

Rather than relying on individual stories alone, we help organisations identify patterns across learner experiences and combine these with staff insight, service reviews, assessment findings and routine outcome measures. This creates a richer understanding of what is working well, where barriers exist and where improvements are most likely to have the greatest impact.

Our consultancy can support providers through approaches such as Learner Journey Mapping, Behavioural Insight Interviews, Experience-Based Co-Design, Service Blueprinting, Critical Moments Mapping, Learner Experience Panels, Psychologically Safe Focus Groups and Insight to Action Workshops. These approaches help transform learner insight into practical, evidence-informed improvements that strengthen services and create better experiences for current and future learners.

Most importantly, we believe that learner voice should not end when the consultation finishes. We encourage organisations to close the feedback loop by returning to learners, evaluating the changes that have been introduced and understanding what difference those changes have made. Continuous reflection, co-production and shared learning are what turn insight into meaningful and sustainable improvement.