Children set to benefit from £110m mental health boost

KIRKLEES SELECTED AS ONE OF 25 AREAS FOR ‘TRAILBLAZER’ SCHEME TO IMPROVE SERVICES

KIRKLEES has been chosen as one of 25 areas boosted by a £110m NHS ‘trailblazer’ scheme to radically improve mental health services for children.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced that Greater Huddersfield and North Kirklees clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be given extra funding and more staff to launch new services for vulnerable youngsters.

Kirklees is the only part of West Yorkshire chosen for the new project.

The Examiner has reported numerous times about parents’ struggles to get help for their children who are struggling with mental health issues or autism.

Urgent cases often have to wait up to a week for an appointment and the waiting list for less serious conditions is reported to be three to four months.

In recent years parents have said they have waited as long as four years for help.

In 2015 a health chief admitted that services for children were “not fit for purpose”.

Mr Hancock said he understood the urgent need to make improvements but stressed that achieving equality of access between mental and physical health patients will take a “generation”.

He said the 25 new trailblazer regions will introduce new services to improve the mental health of nearly 500,000 children and young people.

One-in-eight children and young people aged between five and 19 had a mental disorder in England in 2017, according to NHS Digital.

The new pilot areas will see schools and the NHS working together to pilot proposals from the Government’s children and young people’s mental health green paper. The plans include each school having a designated mental health lead, training new mental health support teams and a trial of a new four-hour waiting time target.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) has selected seven institutions to train up to 8,000 new mental health practitioners beginning next month. Each of the 59 mental health support teams will support about 8,000 young people across a cluster of 20 schools and colleges.

The local organisations involved have not yet been revealed. In Kirklees, NHS services are based at Folly Hall Mills in Huddersfield while Mirfield based charity Northorpe Hall also provides some support.