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Understanding Children and Young People’s Mental Health

The Children’s Commissioner, in her report entitled, Briefing: Children’s Mental
Health Care in Britain, conducted an examination of the current system of children’s
mental health care and said that:

‘The results are shocking. There are enormous disparities. NHS England lays
out clear expectations to local areas about what should be provided for adults,
backed up by targets and benchmarks on success rates and waiting times. In
contrast, there is no monitoring of how many children are seeking mental health
treatment, no information on how many are accepted into treatment, how long
they will wait or what outcomes they achieve.’

‘There were no children’s mental health national targets until last year – now
there are nine indicators, but these are not top priority targets. At a time when
the NHS is under exceptional financial pressure, the system in place makes it
all too easy for children’s mental health to be ignored. Nearly 60% of local areas
are failing to meet NHS England’s own benchmarks for local area improvement.’

Anne Longfield OBE, Children’s Commissioner for England

Prevention is now viewed as the only way to make lasting changes to our system,
and early intervention is in fact cheaper than treating problems later when they
have become more serious. Look at the costs below for comparison.

£5.08 per student – the cost of delivering an emotional resilience program
in school

£229 per child – the cost of delivering six counselling or group CBT sessions
in a school

£2,338 – the average cost of a referral to a community CAMHS service

£61,000 – the average cost of an admission to an inpatient CAMHS unit

Source: The Children’s Commissioner; Briefing: Children’s Mental Healthcare
in England; October 2017

Key Fact

Early intervention is effective in preventing the development of more
serious mental ill health problems, and is cost-effective too.

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