Hundreds of children waiting for mental health care – BBC News

More than 620 children and young people are waiting for mental health care in Gloucestershire, with many waiting for help for more than two years.

City leaders have expressed serious concern that children aged 4 to 11 in particular are suffering terribly since the coronavirus pandemic.

Councilor Collette Finnegan asked health chiefs what they are doing to improve the situation.

Gloucestershire NHS health officials say it is starting to make progress.

Ms Finnegan, who is the council representative on Gloucestershire County Council’s health monitoring and scrutiny committee, said: “The waiting list for CAMHS [Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services] is anything between 18 months and two years.

“What concerns me is that we have a number of young children who have suffered greatly during Covid.”

Douglas Blair, chief executive of the Gloucestershire Health and Care Foundation Trust, told the committee meeting that he recognized the waiting list continued to be very long, the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported.

He told the committee the total waiting list has decreased since the start of the year, but there are still 627 on the list.

“It was higher in January. About 60% of those had been waiting less than a year, while 40% had been waiting more than a year,” he said.

“Absolutely, we still have some very long waits that we have to tackle, but we feel like we’re starting to make progress.”

Mr Blair said confidence had been challenged by a “significant” increase in demand and that the workforce had grown in different ways.

He said they have put more mental health support in schools, which has exhausted some of their staff.

The main child and adolescent mental health service saw a reduction in its total number of people in post during the calendar year, Mr Blair said.

But he explained that they are now seeing about 70% of people in post, with another 16% being recruited.

Councilors agreed that a working and finishing group should be set up to explore the issue further.