Children In East Riding Struggling With Mental Health And Wait Up To 12 Weeks For Support

Januari 27, 2023Januari 23, 2023 falma.u99 children, health, mental, riding, struggling, support, weeks

Children are suffering from increasingly poor mental health and many feel their lives are slipping out of control, the council’s children’s lead has said.

East Riding Council’s Children’s Services Director Eoin Rush said more young people were seeking help for their mental health compared to before the coronavirus pandemic. He claimed many were having an understandable reaction to bad things happening in the world as officials look for ways to reach young people earlier and avoid mental health problems becoming more serious.

It comes as council figures showed its Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Team received an average of 69 requests a month from January to August. The figures, in a report to the council’s Children and Young People Sub-Committee, showed the average from January to December 2020 was 27 requests a month.

Read more: East Riding school where 12 children have tried to take their own life in 12 months as head warns of mental health crisis

There are currently 129 young people waiting for early help, 46 for counselling, 52 for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and 31 for generalised support. The average wait for a child to get wellbeing support from a worker or practitioner is currently between four to 12 weeks.

Waits for higher end help are expected to increase in the coming weeks due to the loss of qualified staff. The council has temporarily stopped accepting new referrals for counselling with current waiting times of more than three and a half months.

Officials hope to start accepting new referrals at the start of next year. Local health services are currently handling around 65 eating disorder cases, up from 45 before the pandemic.

The committee heard a recent survey showed around a third of young people nationally described their lives as falling out of control. The council has trained more than 100 people through its Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Academy to try and help them help young people.

Officials are also trying to make sure school staff are equipped to deal with mental health and emotional wellbeing problems at the earliest opportunity. Mr Rush said the situation in the East Riding was reflected in an increase in demand for mental health services nationally.

The director said: “The emotional and mental health of young people is a serious concern. It’s important that we respond to these concerns at the earliest opportunity.

“We need to start much early in terms of addressing the conditions that people are living in. And we need to make sure we inject a degree of optimism into young people’s lives, if you listen to the radio for an hour in the morning it’s not hard to understand why some of them feel the way they do.

“We want to support them and also give them opportunities to talk to each other to understand the rather crazy world young people are living through at the moment, while not missing the children with more serious needs.”

* If you are a young person struggling with mental health issues contact Childline or by phone on . If you are worried about a young person and think they would benefit from talking to someone, please contact CAMHs on (Hull) and (East Riding) for more information.