Children’s Mental Health Week

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill]

The right hon. Gentleman makes that point very well. A lot of research has been done on this by the Royal Society for Public Health. It is a contributing factor—one of which there are so many.

Looking after our children and young people requires children’s and young people’s mental health services to be properly resourced. At the moment, this is simply not happening. Almost a quarter of NHS child and adolescent mental health wards were rated as inadequate or requiring improvement by the Care Quality Commission in 2019. We also know that we have a huge shortage of mental health professionals, with a workforce that has hardly grown since 2010. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, we need an additional 4,370 consultant psychiatrists to meet current Government commitments. A recent British Medical Association survey revealed that almost two thirds of nurses said that on their last shift there was a shortage of one or more nursing staff. So can the Minister tell me how these shortages will be addressed?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for this absolutely superb Adjournment debate on a very critical issue. While there is, as she says, an onus on Government to respond, does she recognise that, as the health charity Place2Be says in early-day motion 137, tabled only this week by me and others—it also says that the theme of this year’s week is Find Your Brave—schools, churches and voluntary sector youth organisations also provide help to children at a time when they need it?

[Preet Kaur Gill]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. Far too often, we do not recognise the work that schools are doing, and the charity sector, especially, has contributed significantly. Importantly, the Green Paper does not recognise that.

Today I want to focus on the public health approach, utilising early intervention and prevention. This is far too often overlooked, but it is a vital part of any attempts to tackle the crisis we are facing. Furthermore, if we fail to support children at an early stage, we will inevitably feel the impact further down the line when emergency services will be forced to step in. That is what we are seeing at the moment, and change clearly needs to happen.

So what am I talking about and what does it look like in practice? Let us take local government. Because of huge cuts by national Government, 60% of local authority areas have seen a real-terms spending drop on mental health services for children that come under the “low level” bracket, which includes early intervention for things like eating disorders and depression. Or let us look at our creaking and failing criminal justice system. Research by Revolving Doors found that children of offenders are three times more likely to have mental health problems or to engage in antisocial behaviour than their peers—and, as I said, almost all 15 to 21-year-olds in custody suffer from a mental health disorder. Reducing reoffending and the number of parents experiencing incarceration is not just a good in itself but may prevent their children from having mental health problems and reduce the likelihood that the child is involved in offending in the future. Will the Minister explain why, in answer to my written question, the Department for Health and Social Care admitted last week that it had

“not made a formal assessment of the adequacy of mental health services or mental health assessment in Young Offender Institutions”?

Let us take community-based mental health services. The Care Quality Commission, in its review of healthcare and adult social care in England in 2018-19, found that 21% and 10% of community-based mental health services for children and young people are rated as “requires improvement” or “inadequate” for the responsive key question.

Take schools, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned. Schools in Birmingham are facing a funding shortfall of more than £90 million in 2020, but they are still working hard to fund their own mental health support or arranging peer mentors. Why are they doing that? One reason is that waiting times for referrals—if the referral is even granted—are far too long. Last year, I conducted a survey of schools in my constituency of Birmingham, Edgbaston and discovered that 90% had seen an increase in staff and students suffering from mental health problems. That is not sustainable without a substantial increase in support for our schools. Take looked-after children. According to Government data, they are nearly five times more likely to have a mental health disorder than their peers.

Take poverty. The TUC found that poverty in working households has increased by 800,000 since 2010. Poverty contributes to mental wellbeing. The Centre for Mental Health’s Commission for Equality in Mental Health found that children from the poorest 20% of households are four times more likely to have serious mental health difficulties by the age of 11 than those from the wealthiest 20%.