During a panel discussion on “The Crisis Facing Children and Young People”, held as part of Sounddelivery Media’s Festival of Learning, leaders of organisations aimed at supporting the wellbeing of young people and their families were asked what they would say if they were given “five minutes with the next Prime Minister”.
Steve Arnott, founder and chief executive of Beats Bus in Hull, which works to support disadvantaged young people through music, said he would urge the leader of the next government to prioritise “tackling the wealth imbalance and eradicating poverty”.
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General election 2024: Key party manifesto pledges for the children and young people’s sector
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Challenges in next parliament
“That will ultimately stop young people going to prison because growing up when you have nothing, sometimes you'll do anything to have something. You can turn down the wrong path, you can do the wrong stuff to have something that you've never had, and that is because families and young people grow up in poverty,” he added.
In 2022/23, the number of children living in poverty increased by 100,000 from 4.2 million in 2021/22 to 4.3 million children, according to Action for Children.
Siobhan Down, founder and chief executive of Yellow Brick Road Projects based in Hampshire, which supports those who have experienced childhood trauma, called for “high quality for school meals for every child, not just children that meet a criteria”.
She said that using UK farmers to provide fresh produce to schools would both support families and the farming industry.
“We could provide a really good pipeline of nutritious food, which would help ease the burden of poverty on families and make sure that our children have the nutrition they need to grow up to be strong adults, because what we're doing with poverty is weakening children's physicality and mental health, and these are our leaders for the future,” Down added.
Meanwhile, both youth mental health campaigner Emma Pears, founder and chief executive of SELFA Children’s Charity based in North Yorkshire and Beth Thomas, mentoring scheme manager and safeguarding director at Our Place Support in Birmingham, called for greater mental health support for young people.
Pears called for increased early intervention for children struggling with mental health as NHS figures show that one in five children and young people in England aged eight to 25 had a probable mental disorder in 2023.
She said: “It’s also about including parents and carers in mental health support for children and young people so that they can be part of the solution.
“My daughter started to show signs of struggling with her mental health when she was eight years old, and a lot of what I do now has stemmed out of the support that I was able to get for her and myself. And she's 18 now, doing really well just finishing off her A Levels and she's got an offer for university, and I don't think any of that would have been possible without early help for mental health.”
Thomas added: “I'm going to blow the early intervention and prevention horn again.
“If we're going to treat the needs of young people in mental health, we need to be able to take that holistic approach to each individual - it does help that maybe that there's one mental health lead in a school, but actually, if we're going to make long-lasting change, that young person will need more than just a drop in at the door for the mental health lead.”
In their election campaign manifestos, both the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats have pledged to implement a mental health professional in every school.
The Labour Party has also promised to tackle child poverty with an “ambitious strategy” and build 1.5 million affordable homes for families while not increasing VAT, income tax or national insurance.
The SoundDelivery Media event was chaired by CYP Now’s online editor Fiona Simpson and is available to watch in full on YouTube.
