Children’s Mental Health Week 2024

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Rosena Allin-Khan

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

May I apologise to colleagues for being a minute late? I was informed about two minutes ago, so that was the best workout I have had in a while.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Children’s Mental Health Week 2024.

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mr Pritchard—a breathless Mr Pritchard.

The challenges facing the mental health of our young people have never been greater. One in five children have a mental illness, and half of all mental illnesses develop by the age of 14. In the coming years, as many as 1.5 million children will need support for their mental health needs. Amid this escalating crisis, we need bold action to support our young people, but the Government too often lack the ambition, funding and attention that are needed. Meanwhile, the human cost of their inaction only grows.

In A&E, I see children coming in younger and younger. I will never forget their emaciated faces when attending having self-harmed, living with eating disorders or having attempted to take their own lives. I will never forget the faces of parents agonised by their children’s suffering, exhausted from being on suicide watch and fighting tooth and nail for their child, or pushing to access vital services that their child needs, and frequently finding their children being turned away and left to languish for months or even years on waiting lists while their condition deteriorates exponentially.

Pretty much every year we have a debate like this in Westminster Hall and we have many debates in the main Chamber. Every year, we all agree that this has to end, that we must do better and that our children deserve better, but year on year there is simply inaction. Parents are having to give up work to stay at home to be on suicide watch, because they fear what their child will do if they go to work. This affects families in a way that no one can ever possibly understand. A lack of investment in that one young person goes on to affect their parents, their siblings and their future, as well as their and their family’s ability to contribute to the economy and, most importantly, their ability to have a quality, healthy and happy life.

In calling for this debate I am labouring under the hope that we can actually move forward and do something. It is simple: poor mental health is carried through childhood into adulthood. The failures to address the mental health crisis in our young people will leave them ill-equipped as they grow older. We know all too well that prevention is better than cure, yet we ignore that wisdom when it comes to children’s mental health. That is something I simply do not understand. We have the ability collectively within the House positively to impact the lives of millions of children yet, somehow, remarkably, we fail to do so. The Government should invest in early intervention, working to improve child and adolescent mental health services and ensuring prompt access to vital support. Instead, children are being let down and left behind.

Despite young people making up a quarter of all contacts with mental health services, only 8% of funding goes towards children’s mental health services. There are almost half a million children on CAMHS waiting lists. That is a record figure that should be a badge of shame for this Government. Let me remind everybody that, when we talk about half a million children, we are talking about wider families who are affected, people who will never see their children again because those children felt they had no choice but to take their own lives. There are families begging their children to eat that one extra morsel of food because they have not been able to get the services they need for eating disorders.

We are talking about pain and anguish of epic proportions, and on a scale that we have to take seriously. Forgive my passion, but I care deeply about this. We must all care deeply, because this crosses the socioeconomic divide. Regardless of the size of house someone lives in or the amount of money their parents earn, if this pain is known to a family, it does not matter who they are or where they live—it is crippling. A parent loves their child just as much if they live in a £5-million house or a one-bedroom flat.