Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Services

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

Important though they are, we are accelerating the rollout of mental health support teams, because we now want to meet a more ambitious target of achieving full national coverage by 2029. We have already made progress. As of March this year, some 60% of pupils in schools and learners in further education were covered by a mental health support team. That is up from 52% the year before. The principle of integration where young people and children are is absolutely right. That is why we are not just investing in but accelerating the coverage of mental health support teams.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Do the Government recognise that, as the report said, school staff often see the antecedents of mental health? Two areas where there is strong evidence are parental alcoholism, with a threefold increase in children considering suicide and a fivefold increase in eating disorders, and repeated physical punishment, particularly of children under the age of seven, resulting in emotional harm, so that simply intervening on the child may be too late, and intervention must be earlier to prevent problems.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Baroness’s observations. Early intervention is key. That is what our entire focus is on, in the ways we have already discussed, and also on developing a children and young people’s modern service framework because we want to reduce variation and ensure that children get the right support at the right time.