Responding to the RCPCH analysis showing a rise in children and young people attending A+E, RCN Chief Nursing Officer Professor Lynn Woolsey said:
“The rise in children presenting to A+E in mental health crisis is a damning indictment of a failing system, with desperate families left with nowhere else to turn. Nursing staff do everything they can for those who attend A+E, but the reality is that these places are wholly unsuitable for children in mental health distress. They’re noisy, brightly lit, and long waits in these conditions can often cause those struggling to deteriorate further.
“There is an urgent need to improve mental health provision for children and young people. This requires new and sustained investment in specialist mental health nursing and preventative and community-based roles such as health visitors and school nurses. These nursing professionals are crucial in providing advice and early interventions that keep our youngest healthy, but their numbers have collapsed in recent years.
“The government’s new mental health A+Es and community mental health centres are a step in the right direction, but we need the roll-out to be expanded and accelerated with robust workforce plans.Alongside this, we also need to see a strategy to tackle the determinants of mental ill health which can include poverty and social isolation.”
