Summary: An unrealistic sum of investment has been announced in the budget. £2bn to support mental health services. Youngkind needs just £30m to save 50,000 lives a year. This is realistic and achievable!

Personal story: I’m Conner. I’m 25 and not ashamed to say that I’m currently undergoing treatment for PTSD, depression and anxiety after coming home to find my best friend had attempted suicide. I spent 3 weeks in a mental health hospital and have tried to end my life 3 times. As a result of my experience, not least in understanding where there are gaps and breaks in existing services, I have committed to try to help others like me and have recently set up Youngkind which aims to offer meaningful support to those who have reached a point of crisis or simply need some counselling or good advice.

The issue: We’re launching a service that has been recognised as the solution for the mental health crisis in the UK, and we need you to spread the word of our cause. https://meetbuddy.co Take a moment to think about this problem: 2.6 million UK citizens currently have an open referral within the mental health services.

560,000 of these people are under the age of 18 and 75% of those are receiving no treatment. That’s 420,000 kids that need help who are not getting it, which directly contributes to the more than 6,000 under 18’s suicides in 2017, to 1 in 4 girls self-harming and to a generation that is being failed.

Statistically the chances are that 25% of your friends and associates have children with mental health issues, whether that be Depression, Anxiety, Bipolar, Bulimia, Anorexia, PTSD, bullying etc. 75% of mental illness starts before the age of 18, and more than 50% before the age of 14.

That means: “Schools are becoming “waiting rooms” for children with mental health issues charities have warned, with a rising tide of young people unable to access the services they need.”

A new approach to the mental health crisis is needed and the perfect start is with a strategy for improving children and young people’s mental health care. I’m well aware of the fight for funding and the downfalls that the government faces when realistically adding these funds. With an apparent increase in funding by £2bn to support mental health services, this is not only a very bold goal but as past efforts have shown, also quite unrealistic.

The government are talking about £2bn to support an additional 50,000 children and young people, what do we need to support 50,000 children? Just £20million. A much more achievable and realistic sum of investment. In response to this crisis, we’re months away from launching our new service; Buddy. We’re taking everything that’s great from current digital experiences and using them to build the UK’s strongest and most efficient mental health care portal.

Anyone can use this; GP’s, Police, parents, friends and the individual themselves that need urgent therapeutic care or just someone to talk to. This solution doesn’t exist today, and no service offers such ability to enable access to mental health care like we can.

This capability has been built by therapists for therapists, enabling unrivalled secure digital capture and amalgamation of hand-written notes, voice, video, documents and other data, saving many hours per week of therapist time which can then be reinvested into additional capacity for clients.

The data can be easily shared as appropriate and approved with other counsellors, agencies and specialists, with GP’s, with parents and with the individuals. It enables calendar visibility of free ‘slots’ and on-line booking, it ensures billing and payment and provides extensive analytics.

However, this is just the beginning. As buddy gains traction, Youngkind wants to raise funds to enable delivery of such help to those in economic need at further reduced levels or for free. The Youngkind buddy pledge will ask those receiving help to pay, or to pay what they can, or to pay when they can. All so that the “pot” can be refilled for the next child that needs help.

We’ve been working hard to partner with existing charities, we have John Cameron OBE (the Head of Helplines for the NSPCC) joining our board and are currently working our way through a number of other charities too. We’ve agreed with the NSPCC that we’ll partner with their services in order to ‘signpost’ to appropriate care where necessary.

Take action! We need your support to ensure that invested Government funds are used for what they were aimed for. Repeated efforts to support mental health services has often led to the funding being used or absorbed by other areas of the NHS. Our solution can ensure that every single penny invested will be used to save lives of people suffering with Mental Health issues. Please sign this petition so that we can get the Government's support that we so desperately need and we can get to work on saving the lives of the people that need us the most.

£30m per year to save 50,000 lives. Together, we can beat the mental health crisis. Together, we can create a realistic pool of investment that will save the NHS millions.