Hold an inquiry into CAMHS and NHS children’s mental health delays

Establish an inquiry into reported failures in CAMHS and NHS delays affecting children’s mental health, school attendance, and welfare outcomes.

Many children face long waits for CAMHS and NHS mental health support, which can leave families without help and pupils unable to attend school. Access to care and GP prescribing of SSRIs can vary by postcode, which can create unfair treatment gaps. These failures can harm education and drive rising welfare costs. EHCP's are also being affected as we feel the H (Health) parts are not being addressed. This can cause further costs to cash strapped local authorities. An inquiry is needed now.

The nation’s mental health has deteriorated over the past decade. Lord Darzi’s investigation highlighted that people accessing NHS mental health services — including children and young people — face long waits, variable quality of care and persistent inequalities.

This Government has already taken important steps to stabilise and improve mental health services, but we recognise that much more needs to be done. Transforming the system will take time, but we are committed to delivering a fundamentally new approach to mental health care.

Progress is already being made. In the first 12 months of this Government, nearly 40,000 more children and young people accessed NHS mental health support compared with the previous year. This has been supported by the recruitment of over 7,000 additional mental health workers since July 2024, putting us on track to meet our target of 8,500 by the end of this Parliament.

We are also investing in innovation and evidence-based improvement. Since July 2024, more than £100 million has been awarded through National Institute for Health and Care Research mental health research programmes to improve treatments and care pathways. This includes £1.5 million awarded in October to 17 innovative health technology projects aimed at reducing waiting times for children and young people.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan sets out an ambitious programme of reform to make the NHS fit for the future. Building on this, we will go further to ensure mental health services consistently deliver timely, high-quality care. It is clear that ‘more of the same’ will not suffice. We will continue to reform how mental health support is delivered, reducing waits, improving quality and embedding a whole-of-society approach focused on prevention and early intervention.

By spring 2026, up to 900,000 additional children and young people will have access to an NHS-funded Mental Health Support Team in their school or college. As part of our shift from treatment to prevention, we will accelerate rollout to achieve full national coverage by 2029. We will also strengthen workforce capability to better support young people with complex needs, including trauma, neurodivergence and disordered eating. To support this, we are investing £13 million to pilot enhanced staff training, informing future phases of the programme.

On 15 July, the Prime Minister set out plans to open 50 Young Futures Hubs over the next four years. Hubs will bring together services to improve access to opportunities and support for young people at community level, promoting positive outcomes and enabling them to thrive. The first eight Young Futures Hubs will launch by the end of this financial year, backed by a £2 million investment and targeted in areas with high levels of crime and antisocial behaviour, offering a lifeline to vulnerable young people. Work with these early adopters will inform the longer-term development of the programme, including how quickly we move to a greater number of hubs. We will set out more details in due course.

The Medium Term Planning Framework sets out how reforms from the 10 Year Health Plan will be delivered, including reducing the longest waits for children and young people’s community mental health services, improving productivity and tackling local inequalities and unwarranted variation in access.

Alongside this, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has launched an independent review into the prevalence of, and support for, mental health conditions, ADHD and autism. We are deeply concerned that too many adults, children and young people have been let down by services and are not receiving timely or appropriate support.

The review will inform our future approach to mental health, ensuring people receive the right support, at the right time and in the right place. It will also shape how we support people with ADHD and autistic people to live well in their communities. The review will examine prevalence, early intervention, treatment pathways and the challenges facing clinical services, as well as the evidence on diagnosis, medicalisation and outcomes.

It will also identify opportunities for alternative models of support and pathways, both within and beyond the NHS, that strengthen prevention and early intervention alongside clinical care. The review will be led by Professor Peter Fonagy, supported by vice-chairs Professor Sir Simon Wessely and Professor Gillian Baird, and guided by an Advisory Working Group of academics, clinicians, charities, epidemiological experts and people with lived experience.

Department of Health and Social Care