Pupils suffering from anxiety and depression to receive counselling in schools

Critics say 2019 launch of vital mental health plan is not soon enough

Sad girl on stairs
 Some children have been waiting up to 18 months for support from NHS child and adolescent mental health services. 

Children suffering from anxiety and depression will be offered counselling at school under government plans to tackle a widely reported crisis in young people’s mental health. Pupils in England will be able to attend sessions with therapists at school or college in an attempt to stop any psychological difficulties deepening into lifelong issues.

Every school will also be required to appoint a teacher to co-ordinate improved support for the fast-growing number of children who are struggling mentally, many self-harming as a result of bullying, exam stress, dissatisfaction with their body shape, troubles at home and other factors.

The plans are included in a government green paper to be launched on Sunday by health secretary Jeremy Hunt and education secretary Justine Greening.

A new guaranteed maximum four-week waiting time for children with more complex problems to access NHS child and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) will be phased in. That is a response to concerns that many vulnerable under-18s, including some who may be suicidal, are being forced to wait for care or even denied help because Camhs care is overloaded.

“Around half of all mental illness starts before the age of 14 so it is vital that children get support as soon as they need it – in the classroom. If we catch mental illness early we can treat it and stop it turning into something more serious,” said Hunt.

Sarah Brennan, chief executive of the charity YoungMinds, welcomed the plans. “We are facing a crisis in our classrooms and far too many children are not getting the support they need. Too often we hear from young people who have started to self-harm, become suicidal or dropped out of school while waiting for the right help,” she said.

The improvements will begin in 2019 and be backed by what the government says is £300m of new funding over several years, which is on top of the £1.35bn the coalition government allocated to children’s mental health up to 2020.

The National Association of Head Teachers, which represents most primary school heads, welcomed the four-week Camhs waiting time as an “extremely important step forward”. Under-18s are currently enduring waits of as long as 18 months, the NHS regulator said recently.

Around £215m of the £300m will fund the creation of mental health support teams in schools. Ministers intend that several thousand new “children and young people’s wellness practitioners”, therapists providing mainly cognitive behaviour therapy, will undertake most of the work with pupils, but with school nurses and educational psychologists also involved. Ministers hope that this increase in early intervention will reduce the number of children who go on to struggle mentally as adults.

However, the initiatives will initially be piloted to assess their effectiveness, so the new forms of support envisaged will not be available across England until an unspecified time in the 2020s. The government’s ambition is only that they have been put in place in a fifth of the country by 2022-23.

Dr Bernadka Dubicka, a children’s psychiatrist who chairs the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ child and adolescent faculty, said she was frustrated that more help would not be put in place sooner. While welcoming the four-week treatment pledge, she also queried where the extra mental health professionals would come from to provide speedier Camhs care. Official figures show that the number of specialist children’s psychiatrists working in the NHS in England has fallen since 2013.

Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, chair of the health select committee, welcomed the announcement but said she was keen to see more details. “We need to have a much greater focus on early intervention and prevention. Any money going into that is a good thing,” she said.

She welcomed better coordination between schools and the NHS, but said that some schools were already working well with the health service and others should learn the lessons from those places. “It’s often down to resourcing,” she said. “Most young people prefer to have these services delivered in a setting of school because it’s much easier to access. Children don’t necessarily want to feel stigmatised by a referral to psychiatric services.”

Catherine Roche, chief executive of the national children’s mental health charity Place2Be, said: “We welcome the commitment demonstrated by the green paper, and are heartened to see recognition of how vital it is to provide mental health support in schools. We believe that a ‘whole school approach’ to mental health is essential to build a culture of openness and understanding, with appropriately qualified mental health professionals available when needed.”

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, the coalition’s mental health minister, said: “We published the Future in Mind report in March 2015. It was a blueprint for modernising children and young people’s mental health services. They have failed to drive the implementation of that blueprint. Why should we have any expectation that this will be any different? They should have just implemented it. At its heart it was all about linking schools much more closely with mental health services. Two years on, deja vu.”

Barbara Keeley, Labour’s shadow cabinet minister for mental health, said that the plans left “many unanswered questions”, including over funding and whether every school would be able to help every pupil who needed it. “The Tories’ record on children and young people’s mental health has been shocking, with a postcode lottery of provision across child and adolescent mental health services and many long waits for treatment,” she said.

 

 

Link to original Guardian article here

 

Lengthy wait for psychiatric services in Fife

one patient faced a wait of 335 days

A Fife patient has waited almost a year to see a consultant psychiatrist, new figures have revealed.

According to a Freedom of Information request by The Courier there are 647 people on the waiting list for an appointment.

The longest wait to be seen is just sunder of a year, with one patient waiting 335 days – although Fife health and social care partnership divisional general manager Julie Paterson said data for 2016/17 showed there was an average wait was 64 days.

The problem is exacerbated by vacancies – six of the 31 posts are unfilled.

Lib Dem MSP Willie Rennie said: “People with poor mental issue in Fife are being failed to a degree that is difficult to comprehend.”

Meanwhile Labour MSP Claire Baker said it was time the SNP stopped dragging its heels as the growing mental health problem in Scotland is a scandal which has to be addressed by the Scottish Government.

Both politicians compared the delays in getting help with that of a physical injury.

“If I had a broken leg I would be treated by the NHS within hours,” Mr Rennie said.

“If I had to wait for a year not only would I be in agony but I would also suffer permanent disfigurement and would need many more visits to the NHS to put right the damage to my leg.

“Yet because it is mental health, we can’t see the injury and the stigma associated with the condition it seems to be accepted that people should wait for a year. This has got to change.”

Mrs Baker added: “The level of vacancies doesn’t help waiting times, but even at full complement there will still be too many patients waiting for vital care in Fife.”

Ms Paterson said mental health services are being redesigned and the partnership is “committed to ensuring that the needs of individuals are matched to the level of care they require whilst ensuring a responsive and accessible service”.

There is an urgent care assessment team which provides a response on a 24-hour basis to those in critical need and urgent referrals usually have an appointment within one week.

For all other referrals the average wait was 64 days.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Our vision is of a Scotland where people can get the right help at the right time, expect recovery, and fully enjoy their rights, free from discrimination and stigma.”

Trainee recruitment into core roles had increased and 82% of posts have been filled, with a rise in the number of psychiatry consultant roles across Scotland of 21.2%.

He added the Government was committed to a £150 million investment over five years in improving mental health, with additional funding reaching £35m by 2022 for 800 additional mental health workers in key settings.

 

 

Link to Courier article here