Children’s mental health services ‘buckling’ under post-Covid pressure, Longfield warns
Philippa Kelly
Monday, August 1, 2022
Former children’s commissioner for England Anne Longfield has warned that vulnerable young people are at greater risk of exploitation, serious violence and abuse, as children’s mental health services struggle to cope with a post-Covid rise in demand.
A report from Longfield’s Commission on Young Lives highlights a 47 per cent increase in emergency referrals to crisis care teams for under 18s between December 2019 and April 2021, noting that as of April 2022, 388,887 people were in contact with children and young people’s mental health services.
Longfield, chair of Commission on Young Lives, said: “The children’s mental health emergency in England is so profound that we face a generational threat to our country’s future national prosperity and success.
“The scale of the problem is growing, rocket-boosted by the pandemic and the system is buckling under pressure and unable to cope with the explosion in demand for help.”
Schools, college leaders, charities and parents have, the report states, warned that incidences of self-harm, attempted suicide, anxiety and behavioural difficulties have “become an everyday occurrence in the lives of many young people” since lockdowns began.
Despite this, the report found that in 2020/21, just 23 per cent of children referred to mental health services received treatment within the four-week waiting target.
The impact of these figures is described as “a profound crisis in children and young people’s mental health services in England and a system of support that is buckling under pressure, frequently over-medicalised and bureaucratic, unresponsive, outdated, and siloed”.
Donna Molloy, director of policy at the Early Intervention Foundation, said: “The mental health issues amongst young people, exacerbated by the pandemic, requires targeted funding and focus from government. The issues associated with mental health - everything from grooming and exploitation to lower lifetime earnings - affect individuals and society.”
The report calls on Conservative leadership candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, to implement a £1bn post-Covid recovery package to ensure children’s mental health services are “fit for purpose” and proposes an NHS guarantee to ensure all children needing mental health treatment are seen within a four-week period.
Responding to the report, Amy Dicks, policy manager at The Children’s Society, said the charity was supportive of the commission’s recommendations.
“Even before the pandemic, many children and young people were being turned away by overstretched mental health services or facing unacceptable delays in accessing vital help,” she said.
“Now this situation has got worse still, with successive lockdowns causing enormous harm to children’s mental health and placing even more strain on frontline services which are also struggling to recruit and retain staff.
“Only with decisive action and investment will we begin to turn around the long-term decline in our children’s well-being and address the severe damage caused by Covid.”
