Children receive worse mental health care than adults | Letters

No information is revealed about the effects of expensive treatment

I fully support the children’s commissioner’s request to NHS England to provide information about how local clinical commissioning groups are spending their increased budgets on community-based provision for children with mental health difficulties (“Children’s commissioner savages NHS…”, News).

But there is another startling fact that she highlighted in her recent report. That is that the bulk of NHS mental health spending is accessed by only a tiny number of children, who are admitted to largely privately owned, low-secure hospitals. Unlike in adult mental health, no information is published on the outcomes. No one disputes that some children require in-patient treatment but for NHS England to be unable to say if this expensive treatment has had any benefit means public money is being spent without accountability and without consideration for the best interests of the child.

Continue reading... October 22, 2017 at 04:35AM