Mental Health Services

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the commitment to ensuring equity between mental and physical health services is in disarray. The NHS has undoubtedly hit mental health provision hardest, according to a BBC report, with as many as 1,700 beds being cut and patients having to travel huge distances to access care, putting patients and families through significant distress and displacement. Despite the promise of guarantees of parity in funding, the overall proportion of funding going to mental health has been falling, compounding the long-standing underfunding of mental health services which is so costly to human lives and our society at large.

The impact of these cuts on children and adolescents has often been lost in the furore about mental health. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for highlighting this issue, not only through this debate but also through his involvement in Young Minds, which has campaigned so effectively to highlight cuts and freezes to mental health services across most local authorities.

Only yesterday, I and colleagues in this and the other place, heard Sally Burke describe her family’s plight when her daughter Maisie, now aged 13, went into crisis. Suicidal and distressed at the age of 12, Maisie had to be taken by the police—because no GP was available to tend to her—and was eventually hospitalised in Stafford, 130 miles from her home in Hull. Sally Burke has had to fight tooth and nail for her daughter to get appropriate care, including getting her MP, Alan Johnson, to intervene with Norman Lamb and the health commissioner in order to get Maisie moved closer to home. However, she still remained 60 miles away in Sheffield due to the removal of mental health beds for children in Hull.

One of the many distressing features of Maisie Shaw’s case is that she was only aged 13, after being hospitalised, when she was diagnosed with autism. As a high-functioning autistic child, at no point had the health or education practitioners she had come into contact with pushed her towards a diagnosis. Instead, Sally Burke says that she was made to feel responsible for Maisie’s irregular behaviour as a small child. She has had to develop huge resilience to withstand battle after battle with atomised public services. She describes the experience as fundamentally “cruel”. This is one example among many that has come to our attention, particularly from carers struggling to manage their loved ones with mental health and autism as an added dimension.

The figures are stark. NHS England reports that as many as 70% of children and young people with autism have at least one mental health disorder. Some 40% have two or more mental health disorders. The Minister will acknowledge that the condition of autism is associated with significant mental health needs. At present, however, specialist child and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—for autism are few and far between. As NHS England has acknowledged,

“there is a scarcity of professionals with the necessary levels of expertise to provide this highly specialist service across the country”.

Professionals working within CAMHS say that children are not adequately supported while waiting for psychological therapies and that support for parents and carers is negligible.

Can the Minister assure the House that, to address these challenges, the Government will address autism specifically in their work on mental health, for example through the task force on children and young people’s mental health and via the mental health system board and the ministerial advisory group? Given the complexity of autism, will he agree that this group requires specialised attention?