Children must be happy to get best from school
WHEN I was first elected to Parliament in 1997 mental health was still largely a taboo subject. It was little understood and even when diagnosed it was not something to admit to, for fear of attracting derision rather than empathy.
But in 25 years things have come a long way. Recently in Parliament we had two full debates on children’s mental health.
MPS openly talk about their own struggles with mental illness while the NHS strives for parity of esteem with physical conditions.
And mainstream media such as the
Sunday Express run welcome campaigns urging the NHS to go further. So far so good.
The issue is that the problem has got worse.the mental health of young people has been particularly undermined by the pandemic and the impact of lockdown.
Demand is outstripping the supply of support and treatments.the Government has announced substantial additional investment and new initiatives in schools but mental health professionals are in short supply and thresholds for treatment remain impractically high.too few young people are being seen in a timely manner, risking a spiral into more serious and expensive mental illness.
The closure of schools during the darkest days of lockdown proved disastrous. While much is being done to engineer academic catch-up, we need to mobilise all resources to address the mental health deficit now being experienced by one in six pupils.
Children need to be happy and settled to learn and get the best out of school, setting them up for further education, careers and adulthood. Poor mental health means poorer outcomes. For the 100,000 “ghost students” missing from education, disengagement comes with life-changing consequences.
But there is a longer-term issue which pre-dates the pandemic and where the Government’s “Best Start for Life” initiative marks a significant switch from fire-fighting symptoms to tackling the root causes early.
A child’s brain develops exponentially in the first 1,001 days of life. Ensuring that a baby is well nurtured and strongly attached to loving parents or carers at that stage can determine that child’s life outcomes.
Perinatal mental illness costs the UK over £8billion each year, bringing serious social consequences for children. It is not rocket science to see that we need to be doing far more to make sure we have happy parents and babies early on, to help prevent the mental health consequences later.
The Government’s levelling-up agenda is rightly about investing in infrastructure and skills to give everyone a fair chance across the UK. Surely it should start with a “levelling-up” programme for children’s mental health which invests in happy children making for well-rounded pupils and successful adults, wherever they are born.
‘Too few
young people are being
seen in a timely manner’