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Understanding Children and Young People’s Mental Health

The transition between services can also cause problems, and it has also been
discovered that mental health passports can be useful tools in this regard.

A recent survey of school carried out by the National Children’s Bureau found that
although school leaders reported making referrals to services for mental health, they
also reported that they had experienced challenges due to the limited capacity of
and/or shortage of these services.

Schools are concerned that although counselling in schools has proved to be effective,
the onward referral to more specialist services can be difficult to access.

Persistent inequalities in society across different ethnic and social groups of children
and young people are also responsible for both a higher risk of poor mental health and
of more stigma and fear preventing them seeking help.

Amongst the groups possessing higher risk factors are:

• Children and young people from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups

• Young people in gangs

• Children and young people in the care system

• Migrants and refugees

• Young carers.

Creating less stigmatising, more culturally accepted, better branded and more
accessible strength-based early support for at-risk BME communities must be a
central priority, as well as ensuring that such services are routinely available on a
national scale.

Some evidence has shown that creating timely, engaging, pro-active, accessible and
high quality help in universal settings such as schools, youth and online has been
shown to be an important priority.

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