Children’s Mental Health Week — House of Commons, 2020-02-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
Nadine Vanessa Dorries (Conservative, Centre-right): One of our announcements has been to launch the trailblazer schemes, which we are hoping to have in 25% of schools by 2024. I do understand the problem in the hon. Lady’s area. I recently spoke to a headmaster at a school in Birmingham, and he told me that a third of the pupils in his school were receiving pastoral care or mental healthcare, and the reason was that a third of his children came from chaotic homes where either one or both parents were addicted to gambling, drugs or alcohol. As a consequence of having a third of the school roll in this situation, the school had serious problems with the children in the school So in some areas the challenges are very difficult. The hon. Lady said that we cannot just throw money at this, but the money has to fund the services—that is where it has to start, and then the workforce have to come The trailblazer schemes are doing incredibly well. I went to see one in Hounslow recently. We have committed to having 50,000 more nurses and are trying to train more mental health nurses, and we are having great success in getting people through universities and through the right courses and into schools. The school I visited in Hounslow, where the mental health workers were working for the children, was incredible to see. I spoke to a large group of the children who are receiving mental health support during the day, and they told me that they are being taught coping strategies. One young boy, whose name I will not mention, said to me that he suffers from anxiety—he gets anxious—and they have put an app on his phone so he has his time to be anxious and panic. His app time is at six o’clock, and he will go on to his phone and use his app There are so many aspects to the care being provided in school. There is early intervention, spotting mental health problems as they begin very early on. They could spot eating disorders almost as soon as they were arising in young girls. There are also issues such as anxiety and depression, and others that may not wholly be mental health-related but where the presentation of the problem was a mental health issue We are hoping to have 25% of schools across the UK covered by 2024, but, as I said, the bath was empty, so when we turn the tap it cannot fill straight away. The work has started. The people are being trained; they are being rolled out in schools right now, as we speak. I can say that early intervention, having seen it at work myself, is working. That was reassuring, because 18 months ago there were none of those teams in schools; there was no early intervention in any school anywhere. So the fact that we are watching these teams roll out into schools is incredibly reassuring On eating disorders—I will work my way through my speech, just to make sure I cover every aspect—more young people are getting the treatment they need. There has been a significant improvement in treating times in NHS care. An extra £30 million is being invested every year into children’s eating disorder services and there are 70 new or expanded community-based teams covering the whole country. Nationally, we are on track to meet the target of 95% of children and young people with an eating disorder accessing treatment, with a one-week referral for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases I went to an eating disorder unit a week last Friday and met some of the young women there. It was fantastic to see the work being done. Once the young women go in, they have to stay in for quite some time. I am not sure that many people realise that an eating disorder is the deadliest mental health condition. One in four young women die from their eating disorder. It is the only mental health condition where the person suffering from it is scared of getting better. It therefore presents an incredible challenge to the mental health professionals who are working with those young girls. I saw the new eating disorder unit up and running, the work it was doing to turn the young women around and the investment that has gone in. The unit is managing to turn those young women around in a shorter time; it is just fantastic to see While recognising that we are still filling the bath and that there is more to do, what I really want to do is celebrate—I do not think that the hon. Lady will blame me for doing so—the good work being done by NHS professionals, including doctors, mental health nurses and those coming out of universities, to work on our trailblazer schemes in schools with young people. I want to celebrate their achievements. I am also very pleased that, after years of under-investment, NHS funding for children and young people’s mental health service is now rising and will continue to rise as we work towards the goals set out in the long-term plan. Funding for mental health services will grow faster overall in the NHS budget, in real terms worth at least £2.3 billion. The funding for children will grow faster than the funding for mental health care, which will grow faster than the overall NHS budget. This transformative investment will mean that by 2023-24 an extra—this is an important figure—345,000 children and young people from nought to 25 will receive mental health support every year Of course, some children will unfortunately experience a mental health crisis and will need rapid mental health support. I, like others across the House, am pleased with the strong focus on crisis care in the NHS long-term plan, which sets out investment of about £250 million in crisis care. I am not sure who mentioned A&E and hospitals; maybe it was the hon. Lady. We now have, in almost all A&Es across the country—I think it is 97%—a mental health liaison worker.[Official Report, 12 February 2020, Vol. 671, c. 9MC.] When somebody—a child or an adult—presents at A&E with a mental health condition, they are now seen by an A&E mental health liaison officer I am aware, however, that there is also a need to provide more support in the community, and to encourage early intervention and prevention. In fact, most of the £2.3 billion that has been allocated to mental health is for community services. Tim Kendall, NHS England’s national clinical director for mental health, says that no mental health service is ever better provided in a hospital than it can be provided in a community, except for the most serious cases. That is why we are delivering a new school and college-based service to help children and young people, staffed by a new workforce, through our children and young people’s Green Paper on mental health. It is about encouraging partnership working between services, and bringing together health and education to provide early intervention mental health support for children.