This week we will see many examples of what individuals, communities and organisations are doing to encourage people to connect in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways to mark this year's children and young people's mental health awareness week.
The work of NHS trusts will no doubt be among these. For example, their community outreach work and development of stronger links with local voluntary organisations, as well as working to ensure individuals receive care closer to home, helping them to maintain the connections with family, friends and their wider community we know are so crucial.
However, despite efforts to provide care closer to home and a significant growth in the overall number of children and young people being seen by mental health services, we're still coming up desperately short when it comes to connecting all individuals to the care and support they need where and as soon as they need it.
A lack of suitable social care provision is one of the key reasons for trusts not being able to meet demand for children and young people's mental health services.
Interim Chief Executive
In our latest survey, 88% of mental health and learning disability trust leaders, and 97% of combined mental health and community trust leaders, said they were worried or very worried about their capacity to meet demand over the next 12 months, with several highlighting challenges with children's services in particular.
One trust leader told us children's mental health and autism services locally and nationally are in "a dire state", which adds to previous warnings from trust leaders about the long waits for broader children's community services such as speech and language therapy. Trust leaders have also previously highlighted the "massive impact" of cuts to children's services provided by local authorities – such as health visiting and school counselling – over the years. A lack of suitable social care provision is one of the key reasons for trusts not being able to meet demand for children and young people's mental health services.
Many trusts are working with schools, GPs and their partners in local authorities and the voluntary sector to deliver more joined up services that better meet individuals' needs who have reached a crisis point, or at an earlier stage to help avoid them reaching a crisis point altogether where this is possible. But national policies and funding don't always work in support of those efforts.
The pandemic has had a profound impact on children and young people across the country, including worsening the health inequalities they face.
Interim Chief Executive
There was welcome additional funding announced in 2021 which has gone some way to help address some of the challenges facing children and young people's mental health services. But the impact of this funding, like any, is often reduced when it is ad hoc, time limited and too narrowly focused. This is particularly the case when it comes to service design and delivery for children and young people which requires strategic planning and delivery across multiple agencies and communities.
Current plans need to go much further if we are to meet rising demand for children's services and to address the care backlogs in these services. The pandemic has had a profound impact on children and young people across the country, including worsening the health inequalities they face. This need is likely to become more pressing in the face of a cost of living crisis that we expect to be deep and prolonged, given the well-known effects of poverty on children's health and life chances.
We also need more joined up – more connected – thinking and action at a systemic, strategic level. Trust leaders are clear that children and young people have to be prioritised in future plans and there must be a coherent strategy to meet current and projected future demand, aligning the vision, planning and funding across education, social care and health care.
Building an appropriate bed base and a safe therapeutic environment, alongside increased community-based provision, preventing the need for admission, and workforce investment are all key to ensuring high quality care is accessible to children and young people as close to home as possible. Achieving this depends on sustainable levels of investment over the long term, with a firm focus on the enablers of expansion and transformation – data and digital, workforce and capital.
This week, a welcome light will shine on what can be done to encourage people to connect in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways.
Interim Chief Executive
Trust leaders also stress the need to focus on how to shift resources upstream and deliver a far more proactive and holistic model of care that is coordinated, multi-agency and community-based to help prevent children and young people becoming unwell and enables early access to support for those that do. Wider public services, in particular public health and social care, play a crucial role in supporting children and young people and their families and helping to prevent ill health and avoid deterioration.
This week, a welcome light will shine on what can be done to encourage people to connect in healthy, rewarding and meaningful ways. But this week is also an opportunity to re-make the case for broader action to tackle the lack of connection we see playing out in a much broader sense when it comes to how we care for our children and young people and their experience of the current system of care and support available to them. Their outcomes are damaged and their experiences are worsened by disjointed approaches to planning and delivery.
National commitment is needed to create the high quality, equitable and accessible system of care and support children and young people need and deserve.
This op-ed was originally published by HSJ.
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