Last week, the Government published its long-awaited ten-year health plan, setting out a vision to reform the NHS through three fundamental shifts:
- Moving care from hospitals to the community
- Transitioning from analogue to digital
- Shifting focus from sickness to prevention
This follows the 2024 independent investigation of the NHS led by Lord Darzi, which uncovered deep-rooted systemic failures in how care is delivered across England, highlighting particular concerns with children and young people’s mental health services. Informed by extensive public consultation, the ten year plan seeks to ‘create a new model of care fit for the future’.
In this blog, we reflect on what the plan offers for children’s mental health and whether it lives up to the scale of reform needed.
What does the plan say about mental health?
The plan makes several key commitments to improving mental health support for all ages, including:
- £120 million investment to develop 85 mental health emergency departments.
- Full national coverage of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in schools and colleges by 2029–30
- The roll out of Young Futures hubs for children and young people, which will embed mental health support alongside a wellbeing offer
- A pledge to address longstanding issues in specialist children and young people’s mental health services
- Support for children with the most complex mental health needs in residential care to get the treatment and support they need to avoid hospital admissions.
- Self-referral to talking therapies via the NHS app
- Recruitment of 8,500 mental health professionals, aiming to reduce wait times across both adult and children’s services.
At the centre of the plan are the proposals to create new neighbourhood health services, bringing together a multi-disciplinary team across health, social care and the voluntary sector to provide a range of services in local communities. This shift to neighbourhood based services provides a crucial opportunity to provide integrated support, tailored to the needs of local communities. The plan also includes broader commitments relevant to children and families, such as the rollout of Family Hubs and the introduction of a single unique identifier for children, designed to improve continuity of care across education, health, and social services.
A plan fit for the future?
There is much to welcome in the plan, especially the recognition that children and young people’s mental health cannot be left behind in broader NHS reform. In particular, the emphasis on early intervention through MHSTs and community-based support via Young Futures hubs, and the shift to providing more integrated support in local communities, is both timely and necessary. However, the plan raises more questions than it answers.
Firstly, while the plan reiterates important goals, many of the commitments such as the expansion of MHSTs and the roll out of Young Futures hubs are not new. However, we are still waiting for clarity on full implementation of these proposals.
Secondly, the plan acknowledges issues in access to mental health specialist services for children and young people but stops short of providing a roadmap to fix them. For example, how many of the additional 8,500 mental health workers will be for children’s services? The Government recently announced that they are on track to meet this target, with an additional 6,700 staff recruited to the mental health workforce. The plan could have therefore gone much further on workforce expansion.
What is more, how will services become more inclusive and culturally competent? How will the plan address service fragmentation, particularly at transition points from children to adult mental health services? When will an implementation timetable be published? These questions remain unanswered.
The plan also leans on the promise of future strategies to complete the picture, namely, the reform of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system, the National Youth Strategy, and the overdue Child Poverty Strategy. While these are welcome, the wait for their publication means we still lack a cross-government vision for children’s mental health.
A missed opportunity?
In the context of rising demand, growing inequalities, and stretched services, the ten year plan was an opportunity to deliver transformational change in the children’s mental health system. Whilst the plan sets out ambitions to reform the NHS, it is still uncertain as to what this means for the children’s mental health system. With no funding forthcoming in the spending review for children’s mental health, we are also concerned about how the existing pledges will be made a reality, let alone whole scale reform of the system.
We will await further information regarding implementation, but this jigsaw piece approach to children’s mental health underscores the urgent need for a cross-government strategy to mental health.
Author: Charlotte Rainer
