Health and Social Care Committee and Education Committee

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. While we did not talk about that explicitly in our report, we were able to have an informal discussion with young people from across the country, including young people being cared for by Place2Be, a mental health organisation that supports young people in schools. Young people said they were turning to illegal medication or prescription medication that they were getting through illegal means to make themselves feel better. That is clearly an issue for our young people. I know that my hon. Friend has raised that in the House, and I hope the Government will look specifically at it.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

I would like to thank members of both Select Committees for this very forthright report. I was pleased to be part of the inquiry, and I would particularly like to thank the hon. Lady for bringing the report to the House. It is one of the most important reports for the next generation.

I want to raise two particular points. The first relates to workforce planning. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on psychology and as a psychologist, I was very concerned by the evidence that educational psychology training places are being reduced and clinical psychology training places are currently inadequate, despite the fact that the Government’s delivery of the strategy relies very much on supervision from those key professionals. Secondly, we need to be targeting complex groups where more than one difficulty is present, such as the many children with autistic spectrum disorder who also suffer mental health problems comorbidly. Much more must be done on access to autism diagnosis alongside treatment and early intervention for mental health issues.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Lady for her important contribution, which emphasised the need to focus on the workforce that the Government are expecting to deliver their Green Paper plans. We know that Health Education England is due to publish in July this year its workforce strategy, and I sincerely hope that it has listened to the points we heard in the Committee and those that she just made about the massive gap that exists in terms of psychologists and child psychiatrists in the community. That is a critical issue.

On the hon. Lady’s point about comorbidities, there is a gaping hole in the Government’s Green Paper on the children who are the most vulnerable and need the most support. There are references to children from the most vulnerable backgrounds, but nothing in practice about how that might be addressed. I hope that, in the Government’s response, they will reflect on our recommendations and seek to bring forward proposals that target children who most need support.