Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Paragraph: 34
During the pandemic, children and young people’s mental health has significantly worsened and the scale...
Conclusion
During the pandemic, children and young people’s mental health has significantly worsened and the scale of the backlog mean that the NHS will not be able to treat its way out of this crisis. The need for early intervention and prevention in children and young people’s mental health has been consistently overlooked by successive governments and although there has been a significant expansion of services recently the pace of change has not been keeping up with increases in demand. Still today too many children and young people are reaching the point of crisis before they can access any mental health support. This compounds stress not only on the individuals affected, but across society more widely. The lack of adequate protective support and early intervention create unnecessary pressure across the entire healthcare system, from GP appointments to A&E presentations and NHS inpatient services.
Paragraph Reference:
34
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
41. The government is considering this recommendation. 42. We welcome the committee’s finding that commitments in the 2017 green paper and the NHS LTP have been taken seriously. 43. There has been good progress: the NHS exceeded over a year early the commitment in the 5 Year Forward View for Mental Health for 70,000 additional children and young people accessing mental health services. In FY 2020 to 2021, 420,000 children and young people accessed treatment, 95,000 more than in FY 2017 to 2018 compared to the 324,724 access figure published by NHS Digital. This was the first year with a validated national count of children and young people accessing treatment. The 5 Year Forward View commitment was established before national collection of data began in the Mental Health Services Dataset. Although we did not have robust data from the time, we estimate the 2015 baseline to be around 260,000 we are making good progress towards the NHS LTP commitment for 345,000 more children and young people aged 0 to 25 to access support implementation of MHSTs has been accelerated, with 399 teams so far confirmed. We expect to deliver in 2022 the original commitment for 20 to 25% of the country to be covered by MHSTs . This is a year ahead of the green paper ambition, and we anticipate increasing coverage beyond this children and young people’s crisis services are expanding at pace and are ahead of the trajectory set out in NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20 to 2023/24 . Current data shows that 67% of the country have full or partial coverage of the 4 key components of a comprehensive children and young people’s crisis service. This is against a 35% public commitment for FY 2020 to 2021 44. However, we accept there is still unmet need, and the pandemic has led to further challenges. Notably in areas such as eating disorders; the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in demand, and this has affected performance against the waiting timing standard of 95% of children and young people with an eating disorder starting treatment within 1 week for an urgent case and 4 weeks for a routine case. We were making good progress towards meeting these standards prior to the pandemic; however, this has not been maintained as pressures on services have grown. 45. NHSEI remains committed to improving access to evidenced based support for children and young people and delivering our public commitments. 46. Plans to deliver beyond current commitments are contingent on future funding settlements.