Senior Mental Health Lead: Annual Refresher Course 2026/2027
Keep your practice current. Stay confident in your role.
You qualified as a Senior Mental Health Lead — and the landscape has kept moving since then. New referral pathways. Updated statutory guidance. Rising rates of neurodiversity referrals. A growing body of evidence on social media and adolescent wellbeing. The SMHL Annual Refresher is designed to make sure your knowledge, your audit, and your action planning keep pace with all of it.
This is CPD built specifically for practising SMHLs — whether you completed your original training with Creative Education or with another provider.
From big-picture updates to hands-on audit work — here is how everything unfolds
Four modules. No filler. Built for SMHLs who take their practice seriously.
The SMHL role does not stand still — and neither does this course. Every year the refresher is updated to reflect the latest changes in policy, legislation, and clinical guidance, so the content you get is current, relevant, and directly applicable to your setting. No recycled slides. No generic frameworks. Just the updates that matter, the reflection time you rarely get, and the audit work that keeps your practice grounded.
A focused recap of the DfE whole-school mental health framework, extended into areas of deeper practice for experienced leads. Not a retread of what you already know — a genuine step forward.
What has changed in the NHS, in statutory guidance, and in the emerging evidence base since you first trained. CAMHS pathways, KCSIE updates, the neurodiversity landscape, social media research, and AI. All of it distilled into what actually matters for your setting.
Structured discussion and individual reflection connecting the morning's updates to your school specifically. What does this mean for your students, your staff, your parents, and your own role?
Guided completion of both the Personal Audit and Setting Audit, comparison with previous scores where available, and focused action planning for the year ahead. You leave with something concrete in your hand.
Four Ways To Attend
Join our online cohort and work through the refresher at your own pace, in your own time. Video content, written learning, downloadable audit tools, and interactive activities — all available for six months from enrolment. Ideal if your schedule doesn’t allow a full day out of school.
Or join us together, face to face — join us for a full day of facilitated learning, peer discussion, and structured audit time. The face-to-face format adds something the online version cannot: the energy and insight of a room full of SMHLs working through the same challenges. Dates and locations to be confirmed.