Government must invest in comprehensive mental health support

The Centre for Mental Health has said that the mental health of babies, children and young people has been underfunded for too long, leaving a postcode lottery of support.

The Time for Action report, for he Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, calls for a comprehensive national investment strategy to support the mental health of everyone up to the age of 25. It finds that children’s mental health has had decades of underinvestment, leaving big gaps in provision and wide variations from one area to another, including in core services such as health visiting.

It finds that investing in children and young people’s mental health produces big economic returns. Early years services, school-based mental health support and open access hubs for young people up to the age of 25 offer good value for public money as part of a comprehensive system of support.

Yet provision continues to be sporadic, often limited to ‘pilot’ projects rather than full national coverage of interventions that are known to make a difference.

Time for action says a comprehensive strategy should include sufficient funding for essential services through the Public Health Grant as well as investments in whole-school approaches to mental health, in early support hubs for young people nationwide, and in new models of care for specialist services to prevent out-of-area hospital admissions for children. The report also calls for a national outcomes framework for children and young people’s mental health services.

Sarah Hughes, Centre for Mental Health chief executive, said: “Children’s mental health has been left to chance for too long. We have know for a long time that supporting children’s mental health is a good investment, yet funding has lagged behind and provision of support is highly variable.

“Our analysis is clear: we need a comprehensive national approach that gives everyone a mentally healthy start in life, and effective support at every stage of infancy, childhood and adolescence. The government’s planned new mental health strategy is an opportunity to set a clear ambition and direction of travel. And when the NHS Long Term Plan is refreshed, we need to secure national coverage of effective services for all.”