Sir Roger Gale
Member of Parliament for North Thanet (Margate, Herne Bay & The Villages)
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Open letter to The Times in support of the NSPCC’s Are You There? campaign
March 28th 2018
One in ten children and young people in England have a diagnosable mental health condition, and yet less than a third of them receive NHS treatment or support. Additionally, recent estimates suggest that as many as one in four school-aged children experience some form of mental health issue. Without early help, some of these initially manageable problems are likely to escalate to something much more serious.
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The Government’s recent Green Paper Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision provides a crucial opportunity to reform our mental health system to make sure that all young people receive the help they need, when they need it.
It includes welcome measures to improve school-based services and we believe the Government can go further still. Government must think more widely about where and when children need support in order to address the real the mental health crisis our young people face.
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Services like the NSPCC’s Childline are now on the front line of mental health support for young people. Last year one in three Childline counselling sessions were about mental health and emotional wellbeing. The majority of these took place outside school hours – many in the middle of the night. The service has also seen a 150 per cent increase in calls from children who are suicidal since 2010/11.
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But currently the service is only able to support three in every four children who contacts it.
The NSPCC urgently needs to increase both the number of available volunteers and to improve and expand the training that they receive. This will ensure that Childline is equipped to support the more complex mental health needs children are coming to the service with. It surely deserves Government support and investment.
We urge the Government to allocate an appropriate proportion of the £300 million pledged in the Green Paper reforms to ensure that Childline is equipped to meet the rising demand. When a child is brave enough to reach out it is absolutely vital that the immediate response and support is there for them.
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