Mental Health

Maggie Throup Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). Like him, I want to talk about concerns raised by my constituents. However, I also welcome the £2 billion of extra funding that the Government have put into mental health, and the fact that we have put parity of esteem into law. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) made a powerful case for the need to invest in in-patient capacity. In Worcestershire, I welcome the improvements made in the Holt ward in Newtown hospital, but there is clearly a need for more investment of that kind. It is also essential that we take on the remaining stigma around mental health, and I echo the words of support for brave colleagues who have spoken out on this issue.

Members of the Worcestershire Youth Cabinet have, over the last year, set themselves the challenge of raising awareness of mental health issues, combating stigma and providing better signposting and co-ordination for young people with mental health problems, and I commend their collective effort in this regard. In particular, I commend the passion with which my young constituent, Darian Murray, has spoken out on this issue, and the leadership he has shown in bringing together different groups from around the county.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that young people are probably more able than older generations to talk about mental health issues?

[Mr Walker]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The way in which young people have spoken out about these issues is very impressive. As in many other areas, perhaps they are showing us the way in relation to taking on that stigma.

In that vein, I also welcome the excellent work done for people with learning difficulties by members of the Worcestershire People’s Parliament. In the hustings they organised during the general election, and in their subsequent campaigns on mental health, they have attracted cross-party support in Worcestershire. Attitudes towards mental illness have changed for the better in recent years, and I hope we will see further progress in the years to come.

I welcome the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), has held a reverse jobs fair in his constituency to help people with disabilities of all kinds, but particularly with mental health issues, to find work. I am planning to copy his idea in the new year, and to work with local charities and businesses to promote opportunities for people with mental health and learning difficulties.

I have some concerns about a recent consultation carried out by the Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust on vocational centres for mental health. In Worcestershire, we have three such centres providing therapeutic support, re-enablement and support to people who might otherwise have difficulty getting back into work. One of the centres is in my constituency at the Shrub Hill workshop. Another is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) at Link Nurseries. The third is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) at Orchard Place. Earlier this year, the trust launched a consultation on the future of those services, saying that the commissioners were reducing their budget by a third and implying that they were considering moving from three centres to two.

Many of my constituents contacted me to express their strong support for Link Nurseries and the Shrub Hill workshop, and a number of people gave examples of how the services had helped them to turn their life around. I have no doubt that my hon. Friends in neighbouring constituencies will have heard similar stories from their constituents. It became apparent that it was not necessarily the best use of resource for the trust to run the centres itself, and that there were many charities doing excellent work in that space that it could commission to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has been working with staff and supporters of the very popular service at Link Nurseries to see whether the service could be taken over as a social enterprise by staff, who could continue to deliver the service that has been offered with such success.

That is an approach I would support, and I have written to the trust and spoken to local commissioners to encourage them to explore it. I was pleased to see in an update from the trust today that the matter is under active consideration. It is, however, a matter of great concern that although the initial consultation suggested a move from three centres to two and a greater focus on outreach, the trust’s latest thinking appears to involve closing all three of the centres and replacing them with a single one as part of a hub-and-spoke model. It is small comfort that the proposed single hub would be in my constituency. We all recognise the benefit of having more outreach, but I have to question the whole approach of a consultation that appears to be cutting back on an important service, valued by service users, at a time when demand is apparent and the overall budgets of health commissioners are being increased. I urge the Minister to look into this matter and see whether he can do anything to encourage the commissioners to have another look.

Another aspect of mental health provision in Worcestershire that causes me concern is support for A&E. We piloted 24-hour mental health liaison for the A&E at the Worcestershire Royal hospital, and the acute trust and the health and care trust found it incredibly helpful. At the end of that pilot, both trusts asked for that support to continue. I note that the crisis care concordat calls for people to be given access to support 24 hours a day before crisis point, and to be given urgent and emergency access to mental health care. As the Secretary of State said, it is welcome that, since the concordat, the number of people going through mental health crises who are held in police cells has halved nationally. However, I am afraid that in south Worcestershire, the commissioners decided early in 2014 that the 24-hour cover was to be withdrawn, and replaced with a specialist nurse during the daytime and access to telephone support overnight. The Minister has given a helpful reply to written question on this matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speech made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). The issue of mental health is such an important one, and it cannot and should not be swept under the carpet any longer. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) for his work in this place during the last Parliament—he has definitely left a legacy.

How people talk about the issue of mental health is similar to how we spoke about cancer a few years ago. People did not talk about cancer because they hoped it would go away. Similarly, people have not been talking about mental health—they were hoping it would go away, but it has not done. Mental health, sadly, is not going away and the sooner that is recognised, the better. Putting mental health on a level playing field with physical health means that people are now talking about it. The issue of mental health and its impact has recently been recognised by an important group of young people. For the past seven years, Girlguiding UK has carried out a girls attitude survey, which canvasses the opinions of more than 1,500 girls and young women between the ages of seven and 21. As year-on-year surveys can be compared, it is interesting to note that five years ago the area of most concern to those surveyed was alcohol and drug abuse, whereas in the 2015 survey, published in early October, today’s cohort of girls and young women has changed that to mental health. I stress that those surveyed were not just girl guides, but a much wider audience of young ladies and girls across the country. That gives the survey validity and it needs to be taken seriously. What was concerning was that the survey showed a mismatch between what concerns young people and what parents think concerns young people. The girls taking the survey feel that their parents are worried about what they perceive as traditional risks such as smoking, drug and alcohol use and unplanned pregnancy, whereas their own top concerns are mental health and cyber-bullying. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), those young people are definitely not sweeping the issue under the carpet.

Further information coming out of the survey indicated that fewer than half the girls surveyed have talked about mental health in lessons at school, despite the majority saying that that is where they would most like to get information about it. In my short time as a Member of Parliament, I have had a number of cases in my advice surgery relating to mental health issues in young people, and this problem is not going away. Headteachers at my local schools have also highlighted to me the problem of mental health issues starting at a very young age. That is why I am planning in the new year to convene a round-table meeting with headteachers, the police, the local clinical commissioning group, charities and other interested parties. I want to find out what more can be done locally and what more should be done to help prevent mental health issues from arising, and I want to see whether there are any grass-roots solutions to the existing problems.

As constituency MPs, we have our own role to play. People turn to us for help on a daily basis, often as a last resort. Their issues vary, with some easier to resolve than others, but these issues can all cause a great deal of stress and pressure, which in turn mounts up and can be, for want of a better phrase, the straw that breaks the camel’s back. We may not have all the answers or be able to secure the right outcome for every constituent, but often we are the only people fighting their corner and we should do everything in our power to avoid situations deteriorating to such an extent that they could have a significant impact on a constituent’s mental health. At this point, I wish to take the opportunity to pay tribute to all our casework staff, who go above and beyond for local residents on our behalf, often with little recognition of their efforts.

Mental health is not exclusively a health issue. It crosses so many boundaries, including education, employability and family life—the list goes on, as we have heard from other hon. Members. Today’s debate, yet again, has served to keep mental health high on the political agenda. But along with the words, we must continue to take action, and I commend the Government on the work they are doing to ensure that we do have that action.