Nursery World - Post-Covid children's mental health services face rocketing rise in demand

Children’s mental health services are ‘buckling under pressure’ in the wake of the pandemic, says Anne Longfield’s Commission on Young Lives, which calls on the two Conservative leadership candidates to pledge a £1 billion recovery package.

One in six children are now identified as having a probable mental health problem PHOTO Adobe Stock

Longfield, chair of the commission, and the former children’s commissioner of England, warns that post-Covid children’s mental health services are not fit-for-purpose and are putting vulnerable children at risk.

One in six children, aged from six- to-16, are now identified as having a probable mental health problem, but less than a quarter of children referred to mental health services start treatment within a four-week waiting target.

Co-authored with the leading thinktank Centre for Mental Health, and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, the report reveals ‘a profound crisis’ in children and young people’s mental health services in England and a system of support that is ‘buckling under pressure, frequently over-medicalised and bureaucratic, unresponsive, outdated, and siloed’.

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