Young Person’s Mental health services are in crisis. Waiting lists for counselling are months-long and often rely on referrals that are complex for some families to understand. The situation has been made worse by the pandemic.

In July 2020, data from the NHS suggested that one in six young people now has a probable mental health disorder, up from one in nine in 2017. The Children’s Commissioner reported that in 2019/2020 there had been a 35% increase in referrals to Children’s mental health services, yet only a 4% increase in support.

Mental Health charity ‘Young Minds’ in 2019 surveyed young people about their experiences of early support, two-thirds told it that they could not find support when they first needed it. Three-quarters (78%) of young people in the same survey said that they had had to manage their mental health on their own when they couldn’t find help elsewhere, but only 17% felt confident in their ability to manage their mental health by themselves.

It is acknowledged that the earlier a young person gets support for their mental health, the more effective that support will be and so it is important that this Council opens early help hubs for young people’s mental health.

An early support hub is a mental health and wellbeing hub that provides open access, flexible, early support for young people under 25 in their communities.

The centres bring together various services to support young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing - such as youth services; sexual health, drug and alcohol, health and wellbeing practitioners; and mental health practitioners - before they hit a crisis point. The hubs, which would be accessed without referrals from doctors or schools and offer support up to the age of 25, already exist in some areas.

Whilst the Government does need to also recognise this issue and provide funding, the Council must do something in the short term. The performance of the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is poor compared to other areas and with just 0.86% of the CCG’s budget spent on Young People’s Mental Health, it is clearly not being made a priority for them. Shamefully, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG appear as one of 5 areas with the worst performance on the table for ‘CCGs with the lowest performance on mental health service spending and waiting times for children in England for 2019/20.’

It is acknowledged that there is not a bottomless pit of money but the Council should see this as an investment to save. The evaluation of the ‘Mind the Gap’ project in the London Borough of Camden showed that for every £1 invested there was a social return on investment of £3.40 (social and economic benefit).

We ask Cambridgeshire County Council to:-

1. Write to Young Minds to join its call on Government to #fundthehubs – and press for more Government funding in mental health;

2. Write to the CCG to urge it to urgently increase its proportion of spend on young people’s mental health; and

3. with decentralisation, work with the CCG to open an Early Help hub in each primary care network.


Please sign this petition to support the young minds of Cambridgeshire.