5. Debate on the Children, Young People and Education Committee report on its inquiry into the Emotional and Mental Health of Children and Young People

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:13 pm on 4 July 2018.

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Photo of Leanne Wood Leanne Wood Plaid Cymru 4:13, 4 July 2018

Cabinet Secretary, I know that we all want to see the best possible outcome when it comes to the mental health of children and young people, but you must feel the palpable disappointment from Members across this Chamber with the Government's response to this report. We know the problems, we know the solutions, but the Welsh Government seems reluctant to act. 

Accepting ideas in principle will not lead to action, and action is what we need. Every expert agrees the Welsh Government needs to act to ensure that the regional partnership boards have a mechanism to focus on children and young people. They must also require all regions to ensure that CAMHS and social care services provide an integrated service to children with emotional, behavioural and mental health needs. A whole-school approach, mapped and led jointly by health, education and social care is needed to guide schools, and this will ensure that the help that should be available for children and young people will be at the foundation of an equitable emotional and mental health service for young people and children in this country. 

Cabinet Secretary, these are technical policy solutions. Acronyms and jargon make us feel disconnected from the real effects that poor mental health service provision leads to. If anyone knows any teachers, young people's mental health is a matter raised by them all the time. It's impacting now on so many people. As so many people have said today, there is so much despair out there.

When I was young and growing up, my mother's biggest fear for me was an early pregnancy. Now, I would say that most parents' greatest concerns are about their children's mental well-being. Quite late this morning, I posted on my Rhondda Facebook page that I was speaking in this debate, and the response was overwhelming. I want to make the Cabinet Secretary aware of some of the real stories behind some of these statistics. One person I'm not going to name gave the following account of their experience.

'I visited the GP four times to ask for help and was simply given links to online self-help guides in NLP. On the fourth and final occasion, I gave a full disclosure of my use of alcohol and cannabis as a form of self-medication and I said that I was suicidal. I wasn't leaving without him understanding how I felt and how desperate I had become. I was told that I would first have to stop drinking before I could access any further help and wait six months for the most basic counselling appointment. On 12 August, I attempted suicide. I was only interrupted by a friend coming home unexpectedly.'

Now, that moment was a turning point for this person. They turned to friends for support and I'm pleased to say that they got it and are now in a much better place.

A mother commented that her seven-year-old son suffers from anxiety. Despite the 28-day maximum waiting time for access to mental health support, she's now been waiting around four months. He is now on the verge of being excluded from school and even placed in a special school due to the school not being able to accommodate him without an official diagnosis. Anyone in a crisis cannot afford to wait, and, for children and young people, the urgency is even greater. Stories of children waiting months on end or being passed between child and adolescent mental health services were so prevalent in response to my Facebook post that I can't even scratch the surface here.

If you read these pleas for help, Cabinet Secretary, I'm sure that you would agree that this is heartbreaking stuff, and for the families that suffer as a result of the system's inaction it is doubly so. So, please, listen to Members here today. Act with urgency. For some, this question is literally a matter of life or death. A child mental health crisis is brewing, and if you do not make urgent radical changes now we could be facing true disaster. I fully support the calls made by the Chair of the committee, who has spoken excellently in this debate. We all owe it to our future generations to get a much better grip on this question.