Children’s Mental Health

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have spoken in this important debate. We have heard this afternoon many moving and devastating accounts of the ways in which children and young people who are struggling with their mental health are being let down by a system that simply cannot deliver the support they need, and by a Government who have no ambition for our children and young people and who refuse even to acknowledge the scale of the challenge.

There have been too many contributions this afternoon for me to mention everybody by name, but we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) about the shocking figures on suicide and self-harm in her constituency. My hon. Friends the Members for Ealing North (James Murray), for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) highlighted the importance of mental health support being provided in our schools. My hon. Friends the Members for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) highlighted the vital importance of early intervention. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) spoke movingly of some appalling cases in her constituency, including the suicide of a year 11 student.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) highlighted CAMHS waiting times in his constituency, as did many other hon. Members. My hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) spoke about the terrible problems with out-of-area tier 4 placements, which are far too common. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke powerfully, as she often does, of the impact of sexual violence and abuse on mental health.

Good mental health and wellbeing are vital for our young children, while poor mental health is a barrier to learning that prevents children from fulfilling their potential. It affects children’s sense of self and how positive they feel about the future. It can impact their whole lives and for some, poor mental health can, tragically, be fatal. For parents and carers, there are few experiences as devastating as watching their child’s mental health deteriorate, yet that is the experience of hundreds of thousands of families across the country. Parents are living with unbearable anxiety, having to stop work to keep their child safe and try to soothe their pain. No parent should be left in this position, without access to the support their child needs.

The covid-19 pandemic has taken a severe toll on children’s mental health, as children have been isolated from their peers, often unable to learn properly and at increased risk of online harms, with many suffering the trauma of bereavement or domestic abuse in lockdown. Before the pandemic, however, children’s mental health services were already in crisis, with waiting lists, acute admissions and out-of-area hospital placements far too high and with only around a quarter of children who needed mental health support able to access services.

We know what is needed to tackle the crisis in our children’s mental health. What is lacking is not the knowledge of what to do; what is lacking is the ambition of this Government for a country in which the mental wellbeing of our children is a priority and services are there for those who need them. We know that early support is key. While children languish on waiting lists, their mental health deteriorates and so does the length of their recovery and the impact that their illness will have throughout their lives. Delivering mental health support teams in just a fraction of communities is not a fit-for-purpose strategy. It is a half-baked plan that is worsening the postcode lottery of children’s mental health services.

Labour is pledging to end the postcode lottery. We will deliver specialist mental health support in every school, and open-access mental health hubs in every community. Hon. Members have asked about the detail of that service, and I would point them to one of my local authorities, Southwark, which has a service called the Nest. It provides open access to children who live in the borough and a really first-class standard of support for our children and young people, but we need such services to be available throughout the country to every single child who needs them.

We are also pledging an end to agonising waiting lists, with a new national commitment to mental health treatment within a month for every child who needs it. To those hon. Members who have questioned the value of targets I say this: if we do not measure it, it does not get done. Targets are not the whole solution, but they are a vital tool in ensuring that services are delivered to children who need them.

Today’s motion is for every child and young person who needs support for their mental health and for every parent and carer living with devastating worry for their child. It is a statement of Labour’s ambition for a country in which every child can thrive. I commend it to the House.