Ten-year plan for mental health must help young people bounce back from pandemic

The Commission on Young Lives report in partnership with the Centre for Mental Health, is clear that the system has been at crisis point for years. With children and young people's mental health and wellbeing issues continuing to rise rapidly as we emerge from the pandemic, the current system is cracking under the pressure.

We have seen this first hand through our services at Barnardo’s. In April 2020, seven in 10 of our frontline staff reported an increase in mental health issues among the children, young people and parents they worked with. Within a year, this had increased to nine in 10. The impact on children is clear. In January this year, over three-quarters (76 per cent) of our workers who support children who have not re-engaged with school have identified unmet mental health and wellbeing needs as a primary reason for them being out of school.

Approximately one in six children have a probable mental health disorder, according to NHS Digital data analysed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and there were more than 190,000 referrals to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services between April and June last year. This is up 134 per cent on the same three-month period in 2020.

Despite this, investment by the NHS in children and young people’s mental health in England stands at around £1 billion per year: just 0.7 per cent of the total budget for NHS England.

This is why we welcome the Commission on Young Lives’ focus on mental health in schools, and its recommendation that the government should speed up the roll-out of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) so that every child in England can have access to this vital support.

Research has found that supporting mental health in our schools is essential to achieving educational success – a University College London report discovered that as a child’s mental health issues increase their levels of educational attainment decrease, and they are more likely to be persistently absent from school. The government’s recent call for evidence to underpin its forthcoming 10-Year Mental Health Plan rightly flags MHSTs as a key component of its strategy for improving children and young people’s health.

We know from our work that early intervention and support is vital. MHSTs across England play a key role in the integration of mental health and wellbeing services. Through these services we support diverse populations from the Isle of Wight to Morecambe Bay, helping children and young people with effective early intervention. This leads to improved mental health outcomes and reduced inequality in access to mental health support.

But many children and young people are currently unable to access school-based mental health support. As it stands, only a third (35 per cent) of pupils in schools will have access to support from a MHST by 2023. We calculate that there are 5 million children who won’t get access to an MHST, many of whom would benefit from the early support provided through the programme.

Research by the Department for Education in 2017 found that more than two-thirds (71 per cent) of schools said a major barrier to setting up mental health provision was funding. We are concerned that the government has not confirmed funding for MHSTs for 2023/24 onwards and urge the government to do so without delay.

The government's plan must also recognise the positive impact the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector has in improving mental health support for children and young people. Barnardo’s health work, which is partly funded by the generosity of the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, can help to put physical and mental health services on an equal footing, particularly if the development of new Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) prioritise children and young people at their heart.

We want to see each of the 42 ICBs co-producing a robust plan for mental health and wellbeing, that responds to the needs of the children, young people and services that support them. To harness this, the voluntary and community sector will require better support in building capacity. This will enable us to play a greater role in shaping the health strategies in the communities we are working with, and also to deliver the right services in the right place at the right time.

Finally, we hope the government's plan sets out a clear direction of how to improve mental health services to create greater equality for children and young people with protected characteristics. Much more work needs to be done to ensure services are able to meet the needs of black, Asian and minority ethnic children and families.

The plan must also include details of how better support can be provided to meet the needs of particularly vulnerable groups of children and young people. This includes ensuring that helping care leavers improve their wellbeing is a key focus for the government as young people who have grown up in the care system are far more likely to be impacted by poor mental health than their peers who have not been a part of the care system.

The pandemic exposed children and young people to significant trauma, adversity, and loss, with implications for their long-term mental health and wellbeing. We must act now to ensure our children and young people can bounce back from this crisis, before it becomes too late.

Rukshana Kapasi is Barnardo’s director of health