Mental Health Provision: Children and Young People

Debate between Helen Whately and Luciana Berger

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.

Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between Helen Whately and Luciana Berger

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on introducing the Bill. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important subject and I am pleased that the Government are supporting the Bill.

The more we speak about mental health—privately, publicly and especially here in Parliament—the more we wear away the stigma that surrounds it. As chair of the all-party group on mental health, I often speak to service users, professionals and campaigners from organisations such as Rethink Mental Illness, Mind and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. They tell me there has never been a better time to be a mental health campaigner. We have the five year forward view for mental health, a truly comprehensive and widely supported strategy to improve mental health care; a Prime Minister who is committed to fighting the injustice of inadequate treatment; and a Government who are spending record amounts on improving mental health care.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady has highlighted the commitment made by the Government, but does she share my concern that commitments of money that have been made are not actually reaching the frontline and there is a wealth of evidence showing that many CCGs are diverting funds intended for mental health to other parts of our NHS?

[Helen Whately]

I have enormous respect for the hon. Lady; she is doing a huge amount of work campaigning on mental health. I have looked into the question she raises about finances getting to the frontline, and 85% of CCGs are spending at the level they should be on mental health, so the majority are meeting their obligation of increasing their mental health spend. I agree that a minority are not, and they are rightly being looked at and questions are being asked about what is going on there and why they are diverting money away from mental health, but the majority are doing so. The rate of spending on mental health is going up faster than the rate of extra money going to the CCGs—so the rate of spending on mental health is increasing faster than the increase in other parts of health. That is the right thing to do, as we must improve the status of mental health in our healthcare system and achieve parity of esteem, an ambition that I know the hon. Lady shares.

All of us have been moved by the awful story of Seni Lewis, who died after being restrained face down. As we have heard, that was not an isolated case. Those awful cases are happening despite the fact that there are strong guidelines even now on the use of restraint. The Mental Health Act code of practice states that restrictive practices should be used only when there is a possibility of real harm to the patient or other people. There is also National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance that states that staff should be trained to avoid or minimise restrictive practices on children and young people. Despite that, instances of restraint have been going up: 17% of girls and 13% of boys admitted to child and adolescent mental health services were restrained in 2014-15. The hon. Member for Croydon North is nodding as I say that. So the use of restraint is going up and is being used when there are better alternatives.

Restraint should be a last resort. It does enormous physical and psychological damage at times to the individual being restrained, and, as others have said, there are similar implications for those applying the restraint. So the Bill is badly needed and I welcome it, in order to put in place the right systems to train staff, create proper oversight of when restraint is used, and make the system more transparent and accountable.

[Luciana Berger]

Does the hon. Lady share my concern about not only the number of times people are being restrained, but the number of times particular individuals can be restrained? In the summer, we heard the example of girl X: Sir James Munby, the most senior family court judge in our country, wrote to the Government to raise the example of this girl, who was restrained 117 times because there was not an adequate place fit for her care. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is totally inadequate—in fact, horrifying?

[Helen Whately]

That is a shocking example, and I agree that both the general issue of the use of restraint and cases when particular individuals are having to be restrained multiple times need to be looked at.

I should provide some balance and say that I recognise that there are times when restraint is necessary. That has been made clear by the people providing mental health care whom I have talked to, but it is vital that the staff who restrain are properly trained, and the provisions of clause 5 of the Bill address that. By being properly trained, they will also be able to help protect patients from trauma and injury as a result of restraint, and it will also protect staff from possible litigation when things go wrong, which would of course be bad for staff who are trying to do a good job in providing mental health care. As others have said, this is a very tough and challenging, as well as a very rewarding, sector to work in, and I, too, thank that workforce.

I have also been told that at present anyone, no matter what their background and experience is, can offer their services as a restraint trainer. It seems strange that a certain standard is not required of the trainers who train people in restraint methods. Some kind of accreditation is surely required to ensure that the training is of an appropriate standard. I find it astounding that that is not the case, and that definitely needs to be looked into.

We need to get restraint right and ensure that the use of restraint techniques follows medical evidence. I want to put on record that, while the Mental Health Act code of practice says that there should be no planned or intentional use of restraint due to the risk of restricted breathing, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned me that the current medical evidence does not support the use of one type of restraint over another. This is clearly an incredibly difficult area to talk about, but we need to ensure that when restraint is used, the least harmful and least dangerous methods are employed.

It is certainly true to say that the level of restraint overall is too high across the system. The level of variation that exists between mental health units indicates that there are times when restraint is not always necessary. The Care Quality Commission has published a report, “The state of care in mental health services 2014 to 2017” in which it picks up on that particular point. The report states that the CQC is

“concerned about the great variation across the country in how often staff physically restrain patients whose behaviour they find challenging. This wide variation is present even between wards that admit the same patient group.”

The fact that similar patients are being admitted but receiving different treatment in different parts of the country indicates that something is going wrong. Those who are carrying out more restraint should surely work out how they can emulate those who manage to carry out less. The CQC also noted that

“those wards where the level of restraint is low or where they have reduced it over time have staff trained in the specialised skills required to anticipate and de-escalate behaviours or situations that might lead to aggression or self-harm.”

That points to the fact that training is part of the key to reducing that worrying variation.

The Bill will introduce extra monitoring. There is often a resistance to extra monitoring because of concerns about box-ticking and form-filling, but the professionals are actually supporting it in this case. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is backing the Bill, and it recognises the need for the right regulations and for proper oversight to reduce the use of restraint in mental health units. In fact, it has gone further and signed a memorandum of understanding with the College of Policing and the Royal College of Nursing on the use of restraint in mental health and learning disability settings. So the agenda is already moving on, and the Bill is helping to focus minds on what can be done straightaway, before it even becomes law, to improve the use of restraint.

I reiterate that we need to look at the use of restraint in special schools. There was a case involving some autistic children in my constituency who were restrained in a really shocking way. No one has ever got to the bottom of what happened in that situation. I will work with my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), who has suggested that we should work together to take action on these problems as well.

As those of us who are active in campaigning on mental health will know, a major reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 is coming our way. That is very welcome and much needed. The reform will, for example, tackle the rise in sectioning and bring mental health legislation up to date. It might also have looked into the question of restraint, but it is a large piece of work. It is therefore absolutely right that, in the meantime, this Bill will take action quickly to improve the use of restraint in these difficult circumstances. Once again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon North on bringing in the Bill, and I look forward to supporting it.

Mental Health

Debate between Helen Whately and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I will make a little progress, because I have my speech to get through and I am conscious that many Members on both sides of the House want to contribute to this debate.

We are calling for three things that we believe will make a difference. First and foremost—several interventions have referred to this—we are asking the Government to restore transparency to address the murky picture of mental health funding. Secondly, we are asking Ministers to address the fundamental inequality that currently exists in our NHS constitution. Finally, we are asking the Government to prioritise prevention and to implement a fully cross-departmental plan to prevent mental health problems from developing in the first place.

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

Does the hon. Lady agree that transparency is known to be a very effective lever for the Government to use to improve quality? Does she welcome the steps taken by the Government to increase transparency in the performance of mental health services?

[Luciana Berger]

I do not share the hon. Lady’s view. Just in the last week, I have written down a list of 10 things about which I have asked the Government for figures, but about which I have been told that they do not hold information centrally. Many of the statistics that were available previously are no longer available. The central request we are making today is to restore the transparency, particularly on how much is spent on mental health, which the Government took away in 2011-12. Many Members on both sides of the House would like to know those figures.