The young have suffered so much...they’ll need our help

THE EXPERIENCE of this pandemic has been appalling for everyone: the small-business owner seeing years of work go down the drain, the exhausted frontline worker facing another shift, those shielding who’ve barely been able to see or touch anyone outside their households for almost a year.

And of course the grieving loved ones and relatives of so many people who have lost their lives.

On Mumsnet we know all too well that the completely standard experience of families with small children has been incredibly stressful, especially when parents are trying to homeschool while holding down jobs.

So it can feel unfair to focus on the difficulties of just one section of the population.

But when it comes to children’s mental health we have so much ground to make up. Before any of us had even heard of Covid, specialist mental health services for young people were already on their knees. On Mumsnet we saw heart-rending conversations among parents of distressed young people who could not access the care and support they needed, even when they were speaking openly about self-harm.the evidence we’re seeing now is frightening:

78 per cent of our users say lockdown has been harmful to their children’s mental health, and 73 per cent of those homeschooling say their child is more disengaged and demotivated than on a normal school day.

Children and young people have suffered so much in the past 10 months.

We’ve had to separate them from their friends, forbid them from seeing their grandparents, cancel their birthday parties and confine them to barracks.

The very least we can do for them – the absolute minimum – is build a world-beating system of mental health support. It looks like they’re going to need it.