Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I join colleagues in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for securing this debate. It is important and helpful to discuss these matters.

Earlier this month, many organisations sought to raise the profile of children’s mental health during Children’s Mental Health Week. The charity Place2Be took the theme “My Voice Matters” and used the opportunity to urge the Government to give children and young people the support, tools and confidence that they need—confidence to be proud of themselves but, more, confidence to believe in themselves. I have always thought that believing in oneself is the beginning of self-confidence. I have known cases where a lack of confidence among young schoolchildren in particular has been put down to shyness. It is thought of simply as something that will pass in time, but it often hides other problems. In quite a few cases, the underlying problem, left unrecognised, can lead to many crises in later life.

This is why mental health support should start early on in a child’s life, at school. For so many children, school is the first time in their lives that they have been apart from the home and family environment, and the first time that they have spent a whole day with other children and adults who they do not know. A quarter of a million children in the UK are believed to have mental health problems. We face a major challenge in ensuring that they receive the support needed to enjoy the quality of life that those of us in this Chamber would take for granted.

Many are denied help by a National Health Service that is struggling to manage surging caseloads against a backdrop of a crisis in child mental health. Some health trusts in our country are failing to offer treatment to up to 60% of those referred by GPs. Health service figures released last November show that one in five children and young people in England have a probable mental health condition. Surely the time to begin supporting these young people is when they begin at school.

Let me take one area of concern: speech and language. I have some experience with families with children whose lack of speech is a cause for concern. The charity Speech and Language UK tells me that a child with speech and language problems is twice as likely as their peers to have mental health problems. Why is this? Well, its research shows that there may be anxiety or frustration caused by not understanding what people are saying or not being understood themselves. That can sometimes be the case with children with autism—as I know as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society, together with my noble friend Lady Browning. They may struggle socially at nursery and consequently have low self-esteem. They may have difficulty with thinking things through and working out what might happen and do not understand the consequences and implications of their actions. They might feel socially isolated because of their poor communication skills. Their difficulties with language and communication might not have been recognised, so they may not be getting the help and support that they need.

The best thing we can do to help is to make sure that these problems are recognised early and that the proper help is in place. That means that teachers and early years practitioners should receive training on how to help a child develop their talking and understanding of words—this is pretty basic. This will also help identify a child who is struggling. They should also know where to refer them for further support and diagnosis. It is no good discovering something and not knowing how to get it treated and supported. Schools need to be able to measure and track children’s talking and understanding of words in the same way that we do with literacy and numeracy. We need a free tool that can be used at the start of key stages 1 and 2 by class teachers so that they can spot a child who is struggling. Currently, schools must pay to do this.

Teachers need to know what is available to help children with speech and language challenges. We need guidance about what evidence-based tools and interventions work best and which might be most appropriate in each school. There also needs to be better recognition by child and adolescent mental health services of the high proportion of children with mental health problems who have speech and language challenges. Staff need to be trained on how to help children struggling with their mental health and find out what works best for them.

My noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, spoke about mental health support teams. The Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has called for every school to have a mental health team in place by 2025. Perhaps in responding, the Minister might be able to tell us whether the Government are working towards that and agree with it.

I appreciate that I have covered a fair number of points here, and I will be more than content if the Minister, having had time to reflect, would like to write to me. I end by asking her whether she might also consider meeting Speech and Language UK, the charity that I have spoken about. Together, they might help us find some of the solutions to the problems that we are facing.