£0.5m extra funding to beat mental health backlog for young

Wednesday 30 September 2020

The department for children and young people has received more than half-a-million of emergency funding to help deal with a backlog of under-18s needing wellbeing and mental health support because of the pandemic.

The Treasury has handed over £536,000 to the Children, Young People, Education and Skills (CYPES) Department to fund, between now and the end of the year, a ‘three-point wellbeing and recovery plan.'

The plan includes:

• increasing children, young people’s and families’ access to emotional wellbeing and mental health support following covid-19 through youth organisations, charities and helplines and includes managing the backlog of assessments, tests and support for Jersey’s most vulnerable children and young people.
• Giving 'support, tools and techniques' for parents, carers, children and young people to 'promote self-management.'
• Providing a 'wellbeing support package' for front-line services to support practitioners to manage their own mental health and to provide them with the tools to better support both the increase in need and complexity of children, young people and families as they recover from the effects of covid-19.

£234,000 of the £536,000 will go towards paying for staff, including a child psychiatrist, mental health practitioners, support workers, healthcare assistant, a part-time educational psychologist and teaching assistants.

The remaining £302,000 will be spent on the “wellbeing support, training and specialist programmes and treatments."

The Treasury Minister has already approved giving up to £357,000 to Health and Community Services in April, and up to £287,000 to CYPES for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) inpatient services.

Up to the end of July, Health had taken £158,876 of that sum, and CYPES its full amount, meaning that Health still have £198,124 to draw on. 

Express has asked the Government for more details about the extent of the current backlog and how this money will help to shorten it, and is awaiting a reply.