Child mental health services are out of date and need restructuring and essential funding to be fit for the 21st Century. Between 2010 and 2015, funding for mental health in England was cut by £50 million under austerity measures. However, in 2015 the government stated that they would pledge a huge ‘investment’ of £1.5 billion over the next five years purely focusing on Children’s mental health; this money is for training for teachers to spot early signs and then mange them accordingly.
In 2016, Luciana Berger, the then shadow mental health minister, published that the first investment of the funding had only resulted in half of local authorities increasing their spending for mental health. This then faces questions; what are the councils spending their money on if they have been given money for specific aspects and then not utilising it? It was discovered that the funding was not ringfenced. After this funding was given to the council, Brexit happened; meaning uncertainty for a huge amount of EU nationals who work within the NHS.
In January 2019, the government announced another amount of funding, £2.3 billion to mental health. And although this is good, there are still concerns over education recruitment of new staff to be able to manage the amount of mental health referrals for young people and children. The NHS seems to have the same issues that the education sector has, recruitment will always be a massive problem unless the government make incentives for individuals to come into the industry and stay in the industry.
