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by Ian Shires on 22 December, 2014
Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By The Voice | Sat 20th December 2014 – 2:00 pm
Nobody could ever accuse Norman Lamb of political spin. He’s been in his ministerial job for 2.5 years and he’s totally honest about the still poor state of mental health services, particularly for young people. He says what he’s trying to fix it, but the pace of change must be frustratingly slow for him. He (and Paul Burstow before him) and Nick Clegg have done a massive amount in recent years to transform and improve mental health services but it’s more than a one-term job.
Norman has been talking to the Bournemouth Daily Echo about what he’s done and what he has set in progress. It’s clear that the effects of his changes will be felt for many years to come.
First of all, he talked about tackling stigma and getting people to talk about mental health more – partly because that then opens the way to a properly funded service:
I think we have reached a tipping point. Attitudes are changing for the better. People are now more willing to speak about mental illness and are less fearful of the consequences of doing so.
There has been a conspiracy of silence about the issue and that has made it harder to get the financial attention it deserves.
We are still to address the institutional bias within the NHS against mental health services and by that I mean you have very politically powerful access and waiting time standards introduced in the past ten years for physical illnesses like cancer and services like A and E.
All over place you have your targets and rights to access treatment and then you go to mental health and there’s nothing. This is just wholly unacceptable.People have been silent about mental health, people haven’t been out there campaigning about it and so there hasn’t been the same kind of pressure on politicians to do something about it.
Mr Lamb said he accepted that the CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service) was “dysfunctional and not fit for purpose” and was “letting young people down”.
He said: “The idea that we brand it CAMHS means nothing to anybody. And then we talk about tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4. It took me ages to work out what each tier meant.”
He added: “There needs to a huge improvement in CAMHS and that’s why I set up a task force in the summer involving all the relevant agencies and crucially young people, to drive improvement forward. It will not be a Whitehall whitewash.”
He said there needed to be much more early intervention through schools, modernisation of services and more resources.
Mr Lamb said failures by CAMHS pointed up a central discrimination at the heart of the NHS.
“At the moment you have awful stories where young people are told they are not sick enough to access a service and they have got to be a lot sicker before they can. That’s just outrageous.
“Why is it acceptable that you have a right to access a specialist if you have suspected cancer but no such right if you have a child in serious distress and in need of mental health services.
“It’s an unacceptable discrimination at the heart of the NHS and I can’t tolerate that.”
You can read the whole article here.
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