Bereaved Children: Registry

Stephen Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) for securing this important debate, which I believe should have cross-party support. This should be a win-win solution for children. I pay tribute to the work done in support of bereaved children by charities and campaigners, which do such important work helping those in need.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West spoke with real passion and insight about her experience. We are all very grateful to her for sharing her personal story of the trauma, uncertainty and insecurity of losing a loved one as a child, and the impact that has on someone throughout their life. I pay my respects and tribute to her for her constant campaigning on this issue. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) also shared his insight and his concern about the challenges faced by bereaved children, and spoke of the need for mental health support in Northern Ireland. I thank him, and am grateful for his important contribution; his constituents will be proud of him today.

Losing a loved one can be devastating for any child, but unfortunately it happens to young people every day. While there are no official statistics on the number of children bereaved in the UK, according to the charity Winston’s Wish, one in 29 children—around one in every classroom—has experienced the death of a parent or sibling. A report by researchers at Cambridge University’s faculty of education found that those bereaved in childhood have an increased risk of being unemployed at age 30, and are more likely to report that they

“never get what they want out of life.”

The study found that although schools say bereavement support is a high priority, provision is “patchy”, with staff admitting that they lack the skills and capacity to help grieving children.

That is why it is so important that support structures are in place for struggling children, particularly when they lose a loved one, so that someone is there to talk to them, provide the support that is needed, and let them know that they are not alone in dealing with their loss. As we know, teachers are often the people children turn to when they do not know where else to go. It is therefore crucial that schools provide a truly compassionate culture for our children, and that teachers know how to speak with struggling children in a way that is sympathetic, careful, caring and helpful. On the whole, teachers and school support staff do an incredible job of that. Sadly, owing to the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, they have gained more experience of speaking with struggling children in recent years. We should not forget that school staff are not mental health staff; they are not bereavement or trauma experts, and we should not expect them to be.

The Government rightly ask that teachers direct struggling children towards expert resources in their community to help them deal with serious concerns and issues such as bereavement. However, for that system to work, those resources must be properly funded and actually accessible to those who need them. We need only speak to any teacher or school leader to know that, unfortunately, that is not the case. Right now, many children are dealing with loss and struggling with their mental health. They are struggling without support, unable to see a GP, stuck on a CAMHS waiting list for years, and left in limbo without support.

Mental health support teams are reaching only a fraction of the children whom they could benefit. No child should be left without the support that they need to be happy and healthy. That is why Labour has committed to giving children access to professional mental health counsellors in every school. We will ensure that children are not stuck waiting for referrals, unable to get support, and that children struggling with bereavement have someone to turn to—a specialist in that support. Teachers would not be expected to provide expert mental health services that they are not trained to deliver. We will make sure that every child knows that help is at hand.

For those young people for whom accessing support in school is not the right choice, we will deliver a new model of open-access youth mental health hubs, building on the work already under way in Birmingham, Manchester and elsewhere. That will provide an open door for all young people. All that means getting support to children early, preventing problems from escalating, improving young people’s mental health and not just responding when they are in crisis.

Alongside that investment in children’s mental health, Labour will oversee an expansion in the mental health workforce, resulting in more than 1 million more people receiving support each year. Labour will set a new NHS target to ensure that patients start receiving appropriate treatment, not simply an initial assessment of needs, within a month of referral.

For many children, losing a loved one can be an overwhelming loss. As we have heard, for some children that sadly spirals into more problems in the immediate and longer term. It is therefore essential that support is in place to help those children, and to ensure that the safety net is ready to catch every child in every school in every corner of the country, should they need that. Sadly, in recent years the Government have failed to provide that safety net for so many, with thousands of children across the country waiting far too long for support. We have set out our plan to make mental health treatment available to all in less than a month. In her response, I hope that the Minister will outline when her Department will start treating the matter with the urgency that it deserves. I hope that it will put a plan in place to ensure that all struggling young people, including bereaved children, receive its support.