Young People’s Mental Health — House of Commons, 2016-10-27
Topic: Health
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): I apologise to the House for missing the start of the debate—it started a little earlier than I anticipated and I was sitting on a bus in Millbank—and thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I congratulate her on leading this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on delivering it I am speaking towards the end of the debate, so I will try not to repeat the many excellent contributions that hon. Members have already made. Like so many other Members, I have had parents contacting me in great distress at the lack of adequate acute services when their children are in crisis. I had one parent who was worried about her daughter having to spend yet another weekend—this was not the first period of crisis she had had—in the children’s ward of the local hospital, as no specialist beds were available. The children’s ward is not a safe place for a young person in a mental health crisis, nor is it fair on the staff or children in the ward to have to support her either. She needed to be in a specialist bed, but in London there are too few tier 4 beds for young people I had another distressing experience, where a young man needed to go to hospital urgently, but because of a disconnect between the police, the ambulance services and the other services, it took two attempts on the same day to draw him from his house and get him to the safe place he needed to be in, leading to added trauma and distress and worsening his already critical health situation. To be fair, we are seeing some improvements locally, and we are promised additional tier 4 beds and better joined-up thinking between services, but I have to say that this is a small increase from a very low bar An additional problem is the break in consistent service when a child in crisis suffers further as they hit their 18th birthday. They lose one set of services and the adult services may or may not pick up at the same place, which does not make it easy for the child, the family and those trying to support her I pay credit to those working in the public and voluntary sector who support and heal these young people, but whose job is being made difficult because of the funding situation and lack of adequate joined-up thinking. In common with all Members here today, I want to thank the Youth Select Committee, the British Youth Council and the many Members of the Youth Parliament across the country for their work Earlier this year, I met Hounslow’s MYP, Tafumi Omisore, who told me about the history of this debate and how young people across the country had voted mental health as the top agenda issue for discussion among MYPs and the top issue that they wanted to bring to our attention. Tafumi told me: "The future of tomorrow cannot possibly get to a stage where young people can rise to their full potential when they are being failed by this current generation", by which I think she means us. She continued by saying that they "lack the support they need for Mental Health. Every time we say we need more support, Mental Health services simply get cut." National campaigns for the Youth Parliament come along only once a year, so we have to treat young people’s demands seriously. Tafumi will be holding sessions in her school to promote more education on this subject—and all credit to her Earlier in July this year, I met a group of primary and secondary school heads, and I expected them to raise with me the issues of funding, recruitment and retention and testing, which they did. What I had not expected was that they raised their concerns about children’s mental health and the state of the services available to them as being equally important. They were concerned about the increasing incidence of mental health problems, self-harming, disruptive behaviour and so forth. These headteachers had feelings of inadequacy when it came to supporting those children. They felt that they could not get them through a good-quality education and make them ready for the world of work or higher education unless they could give those young people better mental health support These headteachers said that the capacity of CAMHS was overstretched and that there were long waiting lists. They had real concerns about inadequate early intervention. They pointed out that more children were vulnerable for many and varied reasons, including mistreatment and abuse at home, and that more families were living in chaotic circumstances. They noted that more families were living in uncertain, insecure and poor-quality housing, which was exacerbated by austerity, particularly in respect of benefits and tax credits. Most parents and families were working, but they had suffered as a result of the changes to the benefit and tax credit system. Increasing numbers of families could not find enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table. This stress impacts on children—it could not fail to impact on them. The head of Kingsley Academy, who has been at the school only a year, told me that during her tenure, three of her children have been sectioned. Some of her children were self-harming and not enough support was available. The social work team could not cope either Some solutions were identified. Most of our schools either commission the Hounslow youth counselling service to deliver counselling or employ in-house counsellors. Strand on the Green runs a programme called "theraplay", which combines therapy and art for children. It is very successful, but there is no funding left to allow it to continue indefinitely. The school heads concluded that not enough support was being provided An excellent youth counselling service serves the borough of Hounslow, and has done so for many years. Its counsellors strongly believe that Government cuts have led to the increased need for counselling. Less money means higher criteria for early entry to tier 1 services, and—as other Members have pointed out today—when tier 1 services pull out, young people enter the system when they are in crisis and need tier 3 and 4 services, which are extremely expensive. The Hounslow youth counselling service, like many others, is a tier 1 service, and is there to provide initial counselling and support. It is not a therapeutic service; it cannot be, and it is not funded to be. It does not have the necessary professional advisers. However, it is often the only option for young people, because higher-level services such as CAMHS will not see them for many weeks, and often for many months The Hounslow counselling service says that skilled and experienced staff are being replaced by others who are less skilled and experienced, which has made it difficult to maintain important standards in certain departments. It also says that there is no sign that the increase in the number of young people requiring counselling is slowing down, and that further cuts could worsen the situation. It is a voluntary service organisation, funded mainly by local government and the NHS, which are cutting support for the voluntary sector as their own funding is cut. It says that it is likely to see at least 3,000 young people per year and that the number is growing, but it is highly unlikely that it will be able to grow as well in order to meet that pressure. Its waiting lists will lengthen, and young people who are referred by schools or parents, or who refer themselves, will have to wait even longer for counselling Our experience in our borough reflects the experiences that other Members have described today. Children and young people are under ever greater pressures from social media, family poverty, housing crises and identity questions. Services are already stretched, and some face an uncertain future: as school and voluntary sector cuts are made, many are closing or have already closed. There is a lack of early intervention. Different services have different priorities, and there are reports of the decommissioning of early intervention services as a result of reductions in spending on social services We could do things differently. It is not just a question of funding, although we cannot fail to discuss that issue. My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made an excellent suggestion, based on experience of the armed forces covenant. The establishment of the covenant under the Labour Government was led at Cabinet level, but it filtered through a range of services into local government. I was a councillor in Hounslow at the time, and we adopted the covenant, which filtered into several of our services and priorities. Could we not do the same for children’s mental health As many Members have said, we need to do more as a country, and the Government must lead. We must do better. We must listen to young people. We must deliver joined-up services, and we must deliver them early. By doing that, we will save money, but, more important, we will save our young people’s future.