Children’s Services Update - Mental health

If you were to say this to a child with mental health problems, you’d just reinforce a sense of aloneness, of being abandoned and being at fault. In theory, young people come to experience trust, safety, enjoyment, delight and commitment through their parents as people they feel safe with. But for children who come into care, these essential childhood norms are typically damaged. Children in these circumstances will find ways to protect themselves from the threats that family life produce. They can find it very difficult to then trust other adults. Who do you turn to when you are worried about what your parents are doing or not doing? How do you feel safe enough to make friends in nursery when you don’t know who is going to be there when you get home?

And what then happens if at the end of all this, some stranger comes and says, ‘I am taking you to live with someone else.’ So you move to a new home and new people. Are they going to hurt you, ignore you? And what is going to happen in the future?

Unsurprisingly, looked-after children are four times more likely than their non-looked-after peers to have a mental health condition. They are also more likely to have special educational needs. In an effort to address this, and make the care system more caring and responsive, The Social Care Institute of Excellence has published a report from an expert group that identifies the poor level of response in identifying mental health problems (which can involve a child seeing a litany of different professionals) and then providing appropriate levels of support. Its recommendations include that a virtual mental health lead role is established to ensure every young person in the system is getting mental health support, and everyone working directly with looked-after children receives training on children’s mental health.

We need to understand the powerful and painful circumstances of these children’s experiences. For children who have been taken into care, there has been a fundamental breakdown of the core processes that build a positive sense that they are loved by people who are committed to them in the long term.

John Simmonds is director of policy, research and development at CoramBAAF