Children at risk of suicide are being denied places on mental health waiting lists because they are so chronically oversubscribed, according to leading education figures.
A report from the multi-university research program Center for Young Lives and the Child of the North warned last month that the NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (Camhs) is buckling under the pressure of a ‘national epidemic’ of child mental health problems.
It showed that at the end of last year, 32,000 children had waited more than two years to be seen. Two thirds of children were not referred to any form of interim support for self-harm and suicide while they waited “too familiar”.
Anne Longfield, founder of the Center for Young Lives, told the Observer that when she took over as the government’s children’s commissioner in 2015, she was “shocked” to discover that a young person had to be suicidal to be guaranteed an appointment at Camhs. Now, she said, after years of further cuts, the barriers to intervention are so high that even suicidal children are often turned away in many areas.
Longfield said, “Trying to commit suicide now is not enough to get mental health care. They ask, “Did the child really intend to end their life or not?” That’s such a horrifying state to be in. For any family, having a suicidal child is the most terrifying crisis. They often run into a terrible wall that prevents them from getting professional help.”
Referrals to mental health services for children and young people in England have increased since before the pandemic, from 340,000 in 2017-18 to 540,000 in 2019-20. However, last year the number of children and young people with active referrals rose to 949,000, with experts and schools blaming the combined impact of the pandemic, rising poverty and the lack of support for families after more than a decade of government cuts on public services. There is now a postcode lottery for treatment, with waiting lists stretching for years in many areas.
The safety leader at a primary school in a deprived north-west town, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “A child can say they want to end their life, but if they don’t have a definitive plan they won’t. referred. Their parents are told to put away all sharp objects.”
She added: “We also have children who are seriously self-harming, but that is not now considered an emergency.”
The school’s principal said they paid outside counselors to help their security team provide therapy to 60 children whose parents were typically dealing with drug or alcohol addiction or domestic violence, and often with their own mental health problems. He said: “We are being asked to work well beyond our expertise in highly traumatic cases.”
Susie Beresford-Wylie, director of special educational needs and disabilities (Send), inclusion and vulnerable groups at Olympus Academy Trust, which runs nine schools in Bristol and Gloucestershire, said schools are now telling parents of children with a suicide plan to go straight to A&E to go . But she added: “If they have been assessed there as needing Camhs and they are on a waiting list, that same child, with the same needs, is sent back to school without interim support.”
She said Camhs had told parents that school is the best place for children with serious mental health problems because it provides routine, but many cannot cope when they arrive. skipping school, or we have kids in toilets cutting themselves,” she said.
Beresford-Wylie said this put intense emotional pressure on staff. “We are not a primary mental health care provider. Without the right resources and support, we can’t have a large number of children who are clearly in crisis.”
A GP in the North West, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had now accepted “barely one Camhs referral a year” for her patients. “I have started telling parents that there is no point in trying because their child will be turned away,” she said, adding that a child feeling suicidal is “no longer enough” to get an accepted referral. to get.
The GP said she understands how distressed parents feel because her own teenage daughter waited almost four years for personal care, despite taking two overdoses in that time. “After her second overdose, I called a 24-hour emergency crisis team. I was told she is 17. When she is 18, she will be an adult and it will be much easier to access support. It’s just a joke. It’s so scary when your child is on the edge and doesn’t get any help.
“I see parents and children all the time who are really in need and who are going through what we went through. I know they need help but they can’t get it through Camhs.’
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The director of an academy in the North East said they were seeing a huge increase in mental health problems “driven by the impact of poverty” and a lack of support for families from public services.
“It is impossible for us to meet this level of need without clinical training,” she said.
She said some children at the trust’s schools had waited between 18 months and four years for treatment with Camhs. “It’s heartbreaking.”
The trust bought as much advice as it could afford and received support from charities, she said. But she added: ‘These children need more support, and they need it now.
“How can we claim to be a civilized country and fail children so badly?”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is providing mental health care to more children than ever before – with an increase of more than 50% since 2019, while expanding provision as quickly as possible within the current five-year funding arrangements.
“We know there is still more to do, which is why plans are in place to ensure that more than half of pupils have access to an NHS mental health support team by next spring, providing early support in schools – significantly before the original purpose.”