Children’s Mental Health

Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

This morning I visited a school in my constituency, Harris Academy Clapham, and I had the opportunity to speak to young people about their mental health challenges during lockdown, to meet Mabel, the cockerdoodle support dog, and to find out more about what they are doing during their wellbeing week. It is one of the few schools fortunate enough to provide an onsite counselling service, and not just to children, but to parents and teachers where needed. That is through the organisation Place2Be, the founders of Children’s Mental Health Week. But even in schools such as that, that is simply not enough to meet the demand: the schools that are able to offer that take it upon themselves, stretching already slashed pupil premiums or sometimes funding from their local authorities, whose funding has also been severely cut. There is no dedicated funding from the Government specifically to provide that service at this time.

The reality is that we do not have the capacity to treat the rising levels of mental health issues, because this Government simply will not invest in it. Between 2010 and 2015, spending on children’s mental health services fell by nearly £50 million. That is more than 6% in real terms. The early intervention grant, which was originally set at £2.79 billion for 2010-11, has since been cut by almost £1 billion.

Listening to the Minister speak earlier, I was reminded of something that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) was saying. If someone has £10 and I take that away from them and give them £1 back, I do not expect them to be grateful, but that is exactly what the Government seem to do every single day. Cuts, with austerity, real-terms cuts, and privatisation that ends up costing more and delivering less all mixed in for extra measure—that is the complete sum of this Government’s economic policy.

In the sixth largest economy in the world, every crisis in public services, including this mental health crisis, is a political choice. We are seeing nearly 1,500 children a week presenting with mental health problems, while specialist services turn away one in four children referred to them. Around 75% of young people experiencing a mental health problem are forced to wait so long that their condition worsens, or they do not receive any treatment at all.

All Members will no doubt agree that our mental health services are as important as our physical health services, so why do we not treat them that way? While various announcements sound good on paper, they are all completely tokenistic if they are not combined with systematic support. There has to be long-term investment in mental health and education and the focus cannot be solely on training teachers, who are there to teach. We need specialist services.

For every £1 spent on intervening early, there is a cost saving to individuals and society of £6.20. At the moment, there is so much pressure on all our services, and preventive support is obviously the most cost-effective way of targeting funding. It is vital if we are to tackle the spiralling mental health crisis across the country.