Minutes:
“A recent report from a Committee of MPs found that only a third of children and young people with mental health conditions receive the treatment they need from the NHS. The report found that many are turned away because they are not ill enough whilst others face excessively long waits. This legacy is not good enough and will have long term negative affects on the future and well being of our children as well as wider society.
Could the Executive Member for Public Health confirm what they are actively doing, collaboratively or independently, to expedite and improve the inadequate access to mental health services for children within our Borough?”
Answer
The Leader, Councillor T.Kingsbury asked Councillor F.Thomson (Executive Member, Governance and Public Health) to answer :-
“Thank you Councillor Caliskan for your question.
The work to expedite and improve access to mental health services is ongoing and our efforts are very much geared around educating young people on what support they can access quickly and encouraging self-help/building resilience and ability to deal with stress and anxiety. The Council are instrumental in supporting Young Peoples Mental Health and wellbeing in Welwyn Hatfield through the delivery and promotion of local Mental Health campaigns and services. These are delivered to our local schools directly, through partnership organisations and through our Youth Council.
As we heard from the Welwyn Hatfield Youth Council this evening, supporting Mental Health and wellbeing of young people is one of the key priorities for the Youth Council. They work in the community raising awareness about the importance of mental health and the local support/services available to young people. For example - the just talk social media campaign was supported by creating a #JUSTTALK video and produced #JustTalk packs to every school to show how they could incorporate mental health awareness into a learning environment and make everyone aware.”
The Council have also set up a Mental Health Secondary School Leads group which is a forum to share knowledge and discuss.
Over the past 12 months Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council funded two organisations to visit schools and offer support and advice to students where there has been a specific need for early intervention (normally around exam stress). These sessions were delivered in response to reports that there was a high level of mental health issues reported from the schools directly to us.
In October 2019, the Council will be managing the delivery of its first Schools Mental Health Conference in partnership with secondary schools and local service providers. The aim of the conference is to enhance the individual and collective knowledge of professionals, teachers, parents and young people in order to provide the very best support, advice and guidance to the young people in Welwyn Hatfield.
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In a supplementary question, Councillor Caliskan asked how much the Council spent on Mental Health services in our Borough.
Councillor Thomson said that a written answer would be provided.
(Note: The following written answer was subsequently circulated to all Members of the Council).
I refer to the supplementary question asked by Councillor Caliskan, regarding the Council’s budget for children’s mental health.
The Council does not have a specific budget for this matter but we are able to utilise budgets from both the Community Partnership and Public Health teams in order to deliver our work in this area.
For the 2018/19 financial year the Council spent approximately £15,000 on campaigns, projects and support in respect of children’s mental health. In 2018/19 we were also successful in obtaining approximately £7,500 of additional funding from external agencies and organisations to support this work.