Mental Health: Children and Young People

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on securing this debate. I think it is almost four years to the day since we last debated this subject in your Lordships’ House, and I read the speech the noble Baroness gave then with great care. She commented then on the need for much greater awareness of the issues and recognised the commitment to parity of esteem for physical and mental health, which of course is now enshrined in legislation—they do listen to us sometimes. No doubt this debate was in the Chancellor’s mind when in his last Budget he announced that funding for mental health services will grow as a share of the overall NHS budget for the next five years.

Although I have not spoken on this or related matters regularly in this House, it is an area of interest to me. Until recently, I was a trustee of Jewish Care, which incorporates Jami, the mental health service for the Jewish community. More recently, my wife and I have tried to spend some time helping mental health charities such as the Mental Health Foundation.

The Government have, of course, committed to provide an extra £20.5 billion to the NHS by 2023-24 and have introduced the first ever mental health waiting targets. The NHS Long Term Plan in England addresses some of the gaps in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, and it is particularly encouraging to see a greater emphasis on perinatal mental health care services.

It is true, as the aforementioned YoungMinds has claimed, that many local health bodies are diverting some of the new funding they have received for children’s mental health to other priorities and that, while some CCGs have made big increases in their spending, many others are using some of the new money to backfill cuts or to spend on other priorities. It seems that organisations such as the excellent YoungMinds are the safety net when the NHS, and particularly CAMHS, fails to catch young people.

However, at the very least, the NHS is to be congratulated on much better provision of data from April 2016 on mental health provision. As this was mentioned in Oral Questions this afternoon, I spent some time looking at the monthly statistics and learned that 600,000 mental health service appointments for children in the year to 30 October were unfulfilled, which means patients did not show up. Will my noble friend the Minister assure us that steps will be taken to improve this statistic?

I turn to my main point. Preventing problems from emerging in the first place must be the best way to ease the pressure on services. Early intervention is also more compassionate, as it reduces distress and prevents people reaching a crisis point. The big gains in protecting and improving mental health are to be had in our schools, communities, workplaces and, generally, the non-clinical spaces where we spend most of our time. There are some programmes that are helping to take the challenge on. The Mental Health Foundation’s Peer Education Project is a good example.

To make a real difference to the mental health of children and young people, we need to reach children before they need services and there needs to be better support for those who do not reach the diagnostic criteria for CAMHS. I have to agree with the Mental Health Foundation when it calls for greater attention to be paid to early intervention and prevention and for the investment of more resources in this area.