Mental health reforms can't wait until 2023
Anna Feuchtwang
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
After all the talking and all the waiting it was great to finally see the green paper on children's mental health published in December. But it was like unwrapping a Christmas gift from someone who doesn't know you very well: you're excited to get anything, grateful they thought of you, then disappointed that you didn't get exactly what you wanted.
The excitement came from the things I didn't think would be included, like the Mental Health Support Teams that will be under clinical supervision and will link to schools and colleges to help young people with mild to moderate needs.
This should provide a lifeline for the thousands of children caught in the middle ground, whose needs are beyond the means of schools but don't reach the threshold for specialist services.
I am also grateful that the government heard the call for dedicated senior leads on mental health in schools to make the links with local mental health services so that they can provide rapid advice, consultation and signposting.
A designated lead for mental health could engender a "whole school" approach to emotional health and wellbeing, something that the Partnership for Children's Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools, hosted by the National Children's Bureau, has long championed.
But then the disappointment: none of the green paper initiatives will be funded until 2019 at the earliest and the majority of areas won't see them implemented until after 2023.
We know from the Millennium Cohort Study that one in four girls and one in 10 boys are suffering from symptoms of depression at age 14. Waiting until 2019 at the earliest for any of the new initiatives to come into force will be far too late.
The green paper is also not clear whether the proposed provisions will be able to target and reach groups who are particularly vulnerable to poor mental health.
Vulnerable groups such as care leavers and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) often face a cliff edge when transitioning from children's mental health services to adult ones. The green paper does propose a "new national strategic partnership" to focus on the needs of young people aged 16 to 25 but this simply doesn't go far enough. The government must make sure these new proposals explicitly address the gap in mental health provision for this age group. Care leavers and young people with SEND already have clear entitlements to other types of support up to the age of 25, so mental health is the missing piece in the jigsaw.
We have until 2 March to tell the government what we think. Overall I think we should be applauding the departments of education and health for working together and coming up with a good plan. But children and young people can't wait five years or more to receive the benefits.
Anna Feuchtwang is chief executive of the National Children's Bureau
