The ACP has responded to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Mental Health inquiry into the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.
The ACP’s response focussed specifically on the 5YFV for mental health’s plans for improving services for children and young people (CYP). Within this we highlighted the needs of vulnerable CYP with the most severe, complex and enduring mental health difficulties who require specialist services, and a highly skilled workforce in order to deliver those services. Our view is that there continues to be insufficient focus and resourcing of these two elements, on which all other developments depend, such as the proposals for school-based services in the government’s green paper.
In fact, actions taken by local commissioners and providers in many parts of the country appear to be driving changes that are leading to what we identify as the ‘hollowing out’ of specialist services with a reduction in their capacity to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, disturbed and distressed children and young people.
The full response to the APPG inquiry can be found here