Thousands of mentally unwell children are being failed because of “serious and deeply ingrained problems” in the provision of care, MPs warn today.
In a damning 117-page report, the Health Select Committee lays bare the alarming failings in children’s mental health services.
Its report warns how “in many areas early intervention services are being cut or are suffering from insecure or short term funding”.
But Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston said it was a “disgrace” that data had not been collected centrally for over a decade.
She highlighted how the cost of a child’s in-patient bed in a mental health ward costs £25,000 a month. If that sort of cash had been spent on early schemes such as drop-in services it could have helped avoid the need for dozens of children to be admitted to hospital, she said.
Which CAMHS service suffered the largest cut according to NHS Benchmarking?
Sadly, but unsurprisingly:
- Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) is the trust with the biggest cut in budget for CAMHS in the entire country in the latest national benchmarking – a cut of three times the national average
- NSFT is the second worst performing trust in the entire country for CAMHS re-referrals – again three times the national average
- NSFT has the highest number of formal CAMHS complaints in the country
- NSFT has the third highest number of incidents of actual physical violence to CAMHS patients in the country
- NSFT has the second highest number of incidents of actual physical violence to staff – six times the national average
- NSFT is the worst, and seven times the national average, for incidents of use of restraint
- NSFT came out as the fifth worst Trust of the 51 who responded to a BBC Freedom of Information Request about the number of children across the country being admitted to adult mental health units. In 2011, NSFT sent 13 under 18s to an adult mental health unit, rising to 16 for both 2012 and 2013.
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