Young people must have instant access to professional help

HARDLY a week seems to pass without a harrowing story in the news about a child being hurt or even killed at the hands of the very people who should protect them.

Who can forget the awful spate of tragedies in Fife? Little Liam Fee was abused and left to die by his mother and her partner.

Three-year-old Mikaeel Kular was killed by his mother who then hid his body in a suitcase in Kirkcaldy.

And little Brandon Muir, beaten by his mother’s boyfriend until a final brutal attack, right here on our doorstep in Dundee.

I apologise. Even reading the briefest of summaries about these cases is horrible.

But they happen and more often than not we are told that they were “avoidable” and that the classic telltale signs were there for social workers and police to see.

These tiny people were too young to have a voice — to go to a person they could trust and ask for help.

I won’t be alone in thinking: if only they had made it to school age, they would have been protected by a system that would listen and act.

Or so you’d hope. A shocking headline grabbed my attention this week. That more than 250,000 children in Scotland have no access to schoolbased counselling services.

A BBC investigation found that 14 local authorities had no on-site counsellors and provision by other councils was irregular.

We pride ourselves on stellar health and education systems (though we probably no longer should given plummeting world rankings) yet while counselling services were guaranteed in Wales and Northern Ireland a decade ago, there is no such protection in Scotland.

Yes, there are teachers but look at the case of Liam Fee, whose childminder repeatedly voiced concerns to social services and was ignored.

Young people need professional help instantly. They need it for depression, bullying, abuse at home, neglect, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and mental health problems. The list goes on.

They are often terrified and the opportunity to tell someone can be fleeting. If there is not someone on-site or at least to call, they may change their minds and it may end up being too late.

Teachers are already bogged down with admin, unruly kids, marking and keeping up with a government intent on changing their way of working every fortnight.

Enough. Our most vulnerable deserve more.

After every tragic death we are told that “lessons have been learned”.

Really? It doesn’t look like it from the state of too many of our children at school.