Young Women: Self-Harm

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Storey, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, in recent years there has been an increase in self-harming among young women. This is a worrying trend that the Government are committed to addressing. That is why we updated the cross-government suicide prevention strategy and expanded its key areas for action to include self-harm. We are also committed to implementing a community-based care pathway for self-harm by 2019 and to making sure that every acute hospital has mental health liaison services in place by 2020-21.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for acknowledging the shocking 68% increase in the number of young girls being admitted to hospital for self-harm over the last decade. Does he agree that school counsellors can be a very valuable resource in helping to tackle this terrible epidemic of emotional distress among young people, because they are non-stigmatising and easily accessible? However, I visited an area yesterday where I was told that all the school counsellors have had to be sacked because the schools cannot afford to pay them. Will the Minister work with the Department for Education to ensure that by the end of this Parliament every secondary state school in this country has a school counsellor, so that we can tackle the welfare requirements of young people as well as their academic requirements?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to highlight the importance of schools in dealing with this. It is not just a health issue. Indeed it is not just about education either, but involves a cross-government approach. I would be very keen for her to write to me with the specific details of what she is describing—it does not sound like a positive development. Much more positively, more than 1,000 secondary schools have now had mental health first aid training for at least one teacher in the school, and the ambition is to extend that to all secondary schools. She will also know that there will very shortly be a children and young people mental health Green Paper, which I think will have quite ambitious actions for both schools and the health service to support young people with mental health problems.