Mental Health: Children and Adolescents

Lord Patel of Bradford Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, transparency is critical to this and every CCG will have its improvement assessment framework. Unless I am badly mistaken, they will all be in the public domain and it will be possible to look at the relative performance of each CCG. NHS England will also produce its own matrix and integrated dashboard, which will have all the key information about funding, the numbers of people accessing mental health provision and the improvements that those people achieve once they are in the system.

[Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)]

My Lords, from the mental dataset it is very clear that black and Asian minority ethnic adults are overrepresented in the mental health field, but the data on CAMHS are very inconsistent. They show that young black and Asian people are underrepresented, despite the fact that they are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, excluded from school more and overrepresented in the care system. Is it a recipe for disaster if young black people with challenging behaviours are being pressed through the criminal justice system as opposed to receiving good, early mental health care? Is that the reason why 40% of young people in secure institutions are from a BME background?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

If it is indeed the case that young black and Asian people are not attending school and are going into the criminal justice system because they cannot get access to mental health services on the same basis as other children, it will be a national scandal, to be honest. I will certainly take away those figures. I have not seen David Lammy’s report, which I gather came out this morning. The noble Lord said that 40%, I think, of all young people in secure detention are black or Asian—I think in London it is 80%, which is a staggering statistic.