Mental Health Provision (Children and Young People) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson]

Yes, I already have. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman missed that part of the speech, but I welcomed them and pointed out where I thought they were deficient and should go further.

I am introducing the Bill because too many children and young people right across the country are in crisis. Unless our children are happy and well, they cannot learn and thrive. Our children are buckling under the pressure. Last year, a year 11 student at a secondary school in my Twickenham constituency took his own life. Teachers and doctors desperately tried to get CAMHS support for him, but he would not engage, so they said that they could not help. To my mind, that is exactly the sort of person they should work intensively to engage with. When I spoke to the school, they told me that they had five more pupils who were identified as high-risk. Staff in schools are overstretched and trying to provide services that they are neither qualified nor equipped to deliver, nor should they have to do so.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making a powerful speech. I am glad that she is talking about children in crisis, because too often, we talk about the softer side of things, including the need for counselling and early intervention. Although that is very important, a significant number of children are very ill indeed and are not getting the help that they need. The number of A&E attendances by young people with a diagnosed psychiatric condition has tripled since 2010. If they are resorting to going to A&E, that means that they are being badly let down by the system. Would her Bill reveal details of how they are dealt with at A&E, how long they have to wait and whether they end up getting treatment?

[Munira Wilson]

Yes. If the hon. Member looks at clause 3, she will see that it draws on the definitions in the clinically-led review of mental health waiting time standards and mentions both urgent and non-urgent presentations, so that we get data on waiting times for all of them. I completely agree with her point about presentations to A&E; I have heard that from many local NHS leaders in my patch and across London. Indeed, I have heard about paediatric units in hospitals having to look after CAMHS patients—which is totally inappropriate, both for the other children in those wards and the CAMHS patients—because there is such a dire need for beds. We need more provision and intervention from across the lower level that she mentioned right up to the acute and crisis side of things.

Many headteachers tell me that their staff are effectively becoming social workers, trying to support families with their problems outside school and get children to re-engage with schools, as the number of children missing from school has increased since the pandemic. A number of primary schools in my constituency are relying on parental donations to offer therapy and mental health support.

Urgent action and further investment is desperately needed. We should have a trained mental health counsellor in every school, community mental health hubs and additional crisis beds, as has been suggested. We need to track that action and investment properly so that the Government can be held to account. The Bill would be the start of holding Ministers’ feet to the fire on their promises by giving the public, and Members of Parliament as their representatives, the tools to do so. Young people and their parents and carers could ensure that they are no longer short-changed in their own area and see in stark daylight the reality of what is being spent in their area on children and young people’s mental health. We would all have a much clearer idea of just how long those children and young people are languishing on waiting lists.