Children and Young People: Mental Health Services

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

These are interconnected but separate issues. Anyone can suffer from mental health problems, including a high propensity of children with learning difficulties. A separate line of work led solely by the DfE is providing specific educational support for children with learning difficulties. The point of having specialist staff in all primary and secondary schools is to spot any child, whatever their vulnerability, and signpost them to services.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, have the Government done any analysis of the numbers? My daughter is a child psychiatrist working particularly with younger children. She points out to me that there is little attention given to the needs of nought to two year-olds and their mental health in the Green Paper. We know that interventions are important in those early years. For the prevention of adverse childhood experiences and interventions after adverse childhood experiences, does the noble Lord consider it wise to ring-fence funds to support prevention and early intervention at that stage?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness makes an excellent point about the importance of that age group. I will write to her giving the specifics of the support available to children and families with children of that age. A significant amount of funding is going into specialist perinatal and mental health services for mothers, which is a big part of the picture, but not the whole. Health visitors are being trained in mental health support. I will write to the noble Baroness with more details but I am sure there is more to be done.