Mental Health Provision: Children and Young People

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman from the bottom of my heart for that intervention, because that is the crux of the point that I am seeking to make. I have sought to highlight some of the issues in the Green Paper, and I will highlight a few more, but the greatest problem is what is not in it—namely, what we can do to prevent mental ill health in our young people rather than deal with and treat it when they become mentally unwell. I will come to that in a moment.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists eloquently states what I believe, which is that the Green Paper lacks

“a suitable scale of ambition or speed of action.”

The royal college reminds us that in the Health Education England mental health workforce plan, which sets out the posts for which the NHS aims to recruit from now until 2021, there are no new consultant psychiatrist posts for children and young people’s community services—none at all. Yet we know that there is a massive shortage of child psychiatrists in our country.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate because it is really good to be having a conversation about this Green Paper. It is worth mentioning that it is a great moment of progress to have a joint piece of work between healthcare services and the Department for Education on getting into the issue of mental health in young people, which is such a growing problem. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), I think that we have to get into understanding the causes better. As the hon. Lady said, we need to take action at greater pace and to a greater scale. Does she welcome the fact that, as the Royal College of Psychiatrists says, there has been a step in the right direction in that that there is an evidence-based approach, which is to be welcomed? Does she agree that a particular challenge that must be addressed is the need to recruit and retain the workforce that we need to deliver this care and support to young people?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Lady. I believe that we both share the concern about the challenge of recruitment within the mental health workforce. The Government themselves acknowledge that there is an issue by way of the fact that they have put forward a plan to recruit these extra thousands of mental health workers between now and 2021. In the context of our conversation this evening about young people in particular, it is particularly disheartening and dispiriting that the specific plan that was set out only a few months ago contains nothing to expand the number of child psychiatrists—something that we desperately need. In the north-west, we really struggle to fill vacancies for those posts.