Ten of thousands of children are waiting for mental health treatment as the soaring number of patients leaves services overwhelmed. The “staggering” figures are revealed in a report by Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza, who warned some youngsters are waiting years for vital treatment.
Patchy services mean children in some parts of the country face longer delays than others, she said. And a failure to provide sufficient mental health treatment is also contributing to a crisis of absence in schools, with one in five pupils classed as “persistently absent”, which means they missed at least one in ten classes.
More than 958,200 children in England have an active referral to mental health services as of the end of March 2024, an increase of 10,000 from the previous year and equivalent to 8% of England’s population of 12 million children. The number receiving treatment has increased but not enough to prevent long waits. There were 320,000 children waiting to begin treatment at the end of the 2023-24 financial year, up from 270,300 a year previously.
Dame Rachel said: “The numbers in this report are staggering – but these are not numbers, these are real children who not only missing previous moments of their childhood while stuck waiting for vital treatment for months, sometimes years, but also the scaffolding that makes their lives happy and fulfilled with their friends.
“All too often, it is these children with unmet additional needs who go missing from education, falling off the radars of services and denied opportunities their peers take for granted. Children tell me they want to be in school – we must match this ambition they have for themselves and take preventative steps so that fewer children miss school for mental health-related reasons.”
In a report published today to mark the end of Mental Health Awareness Week she warned that black children, older teenagers, and girls were among the groups most likely to be referred for mental health crises.
Anxiety was the most common reason for needing treatment while the number of children referred for neurodevelopmental conditions like autism and ADHD has increased.
Highlighting huge regional variations, the report found that children in Leicestershire and Rutland wait just six days for treatment on average, while children in Hampshire and Isle of Wight wait 103 days on average.
A significant number of children in need, 8% or around one in 13, had to wait longer than a year for treatment.
Dame Rachel said changes to the NHS announced by the Government, including the abolition of quango NHS England with the health service brought back into the Department of Health, should be used as an opportunity to improve mental health services for children.
“The future of our NHS must start with children. If we get this right, we don’t just reduce pressure on services – we give every child the best start in life.”
No child should be forced to wait longer than four weeks for assessment and four weeks for treatment, she said. This would require additional, annual, ring-fenced funding for children’s mental health services in every local area, the report said.
The Commissioner also called for children to be given access to mental health help in their schools and communities without needing a diagnosis or medical label, and for Mental Health Support Teams to be installed in all schools.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Children with mental health issues are not getting the support or care they deserve, and they remain a top priority in our mission to transform our mental health system.
“This week, we announced our intention to expand access to mental health teams in schools, ensuring that every pupil has access to early support services in their community. On top of this, we have announced £26 million to open new mental health crisis centres, while recruiting 8,500 mental health workers to give young people access to quality and sustained care. This is all part of our mission to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.”