Jeremy Hunt has promised to tackle the “big problems” and failings in NHS services for children and young people with mental health problems which he says are causing “too many tragedies”.
The health secretary singled out children and adolescent mental health services (Camhs) as “the biggest single area of weakness in NHS provision at the moment” in an interview with the Health Service Journal.
Hunt pledged to make support and treatment for young people a priority in an interview in which he said he wanted to continue in his role for another two or three years so he can oversee permanent improvements to the NHS.
He said that too many young people and families are being let down by the NHS because of problems in the availability of services, which meant that problems were being left untreated, sometimes for years.
Schools should work more closely with NHS Camhs teams and more schools should have counsellors on their premises to try to ensure more young people got help faster, he said.
“I think we are letting down too many families and not intervening early enough when there is a curable mental health condition, which we can do something about when a child is eight or nine but if you leave it until they are 15 or 16 it’s too late.
“There are big problems with the capacity in Camhs services but it’s not just there, but [also] what happens in schools. Very few schools have a full-time Camhs worker,” Hunt told the HSJ.
“I think this is possibly the biggest single area of weakness in NHS provision at the moment. There are too many tragedies because children develop eating disorders or psychosis or chronic depression, which is then very difficult to put right as they get older,” he added.
The Guardian revealed this month that almost a quarter of a million children and young people aged 18 and below are being treated for mental health problems by the NHS in England every month, but that that was a significant underestimate of the true scale of the problem as only 60% of the 63 NHS mental health trusts supplied data to NHS Digital, which collated the figures.
Jeremy Hunt promises better mental health services for children and adolescents
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