The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has today announced a major new investment of £810,000 to provide pioneering mental health support for up to 15,000 young Londoners in schools across the capital.
The programme, delivered in partnership with Anna Freud – a leading mental health charity for children and young people – will work with targeted secondary schools across nine boroughs to help young people where there is a high need for mental health support.
Sadiq’s investment is designed to help young Londoners feel supported. It will focus on making sure that every part of school life actively supports the mental health and wellbeing of pupils, staff and families.
This could include teaching stress-management techniques, introducing initiatives to make mental health more visible such as wellbeing weeks, parent sessions, peer-support groups or mental health training to teachers and support staff.
As young people continue to face increasing mental health challenges, this initiative will help develop a model for how this innovative approach can work across a range of London school and provide vital evidence for the future of children’s mental health support. Learnings will be shared with schools, the government and NHS partners as we work collaboratively to prepare for the full roll out of Mental Health Support Teams in schools by 2030.
New NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) data reveals that open referrals to services have more than doubled since before the pandemic. There were 81,575 open referrals to CAHMS in London in July 2025. In July 2019 the figure stood at 31,725. Across England these figures stood at 554,966 in July 2025 compared to 267,423 in July 2019.
While data from NHS Digital also shows that children and young people with mental health problems are almost seven times as likely to have had 15 or more days off school in one term.
The new programme follows polling from YouGov last year, commissioned by Global Future Partners¹, that found almost one in four young Londoners regularly feel emotionally unwell, and that almost half of 16–24-year-olds feel their schools did not teach them enough about coping with mental health struggles.
Evaluation of the new programme will be carefully conducted by Healthy Dialogues Ltd, with best practice shared with other schools across the capital to help them adapt to suit their individual needs.
This delivers the Mayor’s manifesto commitment to take action to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young Londoners with initiatives in and around secondary schools. The programme begins this month at schools in Camden, Greenwich, Haringey and Newham; followed by Bexley and Lambeth in October; and Southwark, Westminster, and Kensington & Chelsea in November.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said, “We are facing a national crisis with too many children and young people facing huge struggles with their mental health. That’s why I’m stepping forward to help provide targeted schools across London with tools, training and support to make a real difference for their students.
“By working with our fantastic schools, partners and our NHS we can have a positive and lasting impact on our young people that can also help others across the country, as we work to make London the greatest and healthiest city in the world to grow up in.”
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