Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is very experienced in this area and has been involved with local clinical commissioning groups. The NHS has already opened 117 additional new mental health beds, and we have introduced new waiting standards for psychosis and eating disorders among children. Progress is already being made, but we should not dismiss the frustrations of those trying to access services. That is why we have put in place ambitious new targets with the long-term plan: we want to see 100% of children able to access the care they need.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, about two-thirds of children with autism and two-fifths of children with special educational needs experience mental health problems. But the provision of specialist clinical community child learning disabilities services is sparse. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to ensure that the needs of those vulnerable young people are planned for in the new funding allocation?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is right: those with particular needs, where autism or learning disabilities cross over into mental illness, must be taken into account. Some distressing figures show that those with learning disabilities do not get the physical health assessments that they need either. This must be taken into account and is in part why the children and young people’s Green Paper puts in place designated senior leads for mental health in schools and mental health support teams in and around schools, so that those needs can be identified as early as possible, and we can prioritise prevention and early identification of mental health needs when they arise.