Nearly 1,000,000 youngsters in England have a referral to youngsters and younger individuals’s psychological well being companies, new figures present.
Figures launched by the Kids’s Commissioner for England present the numbers elevated by 10,000 from the tip of March 2024 to greater than 958,200.
Rachel de Souza, Kids’s Commissioner for England, seeks a renewed focus and funding in youngsters’s psychological well being companies. Credit score: PA
Figures are ‘staggering’
The equal of 8 per cent of England’s inhabitants of 12 million youngsters now have a referral. That’s nearly one in 10.
Kids’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza described the figures as “staggering”.
She is asking for renewed focus and funding in youngsters’s psychological well being companies by way of the NHS’s 10-year plan.
Soar in ready listing of fifty,000
De Souza discovered that extra youngsters started therapy in 2023/24 than the earlier 12 months. Nonetheless, the numbers nonetheless ready to be seen jumped by 50,000.
She stated the youngsters had been “lacking valuable moments of their childhood whereas caught ready for very important therapy for months, typically years, but in addition the scaffolding that makes their lives pleased and fulfilled with their pals”.
Kids who had been but to obtain help by the tip of 2023/24 waited a mean of six months for therapy to begin.
Practically one-third of those youngsters waited greater than a 12 months.
The system must ‘pay attention earlier’
De Souza stated we should cease asking youngsters to “show they’re unwell sufficient to deserve assist”.
As a substitute, she stated we want a system that “listens earlier, acts quicker, and helps each baby”.
We requested the Division of Well being and Social Care to remark, however it has but to reply.
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Printed: 4 June 2025