270,000 Children Waiting for Mental Health Support: Report

Nearly a million children have been referred to youth mental health services, with the Children’s Commissioner saying that this generation of young people have experienced “uniquely uncertain and challenging times,” including the COVID-19 pandemic. Dame Rachel de Souza’s report on children’s mental health care services published on Thursday found that from 2022–2023, 949,200 children in England had been referred to the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CYPMHS), representing 8 percent of the 11.9 million children across the country. Of those, almost 305,000 entered treatment while some 372,800 (39 percent) had their referrals closed before accessing the service. More than a quarter of a million (270,300) children were still waiting at the end of the year, while around 32,200 waited for more than two years for their second contact from CYPMHS....