Labour said its "bold" mental health plans are “deliverable and necessary” as statistics show tens of thousands in Merseyside struggle to get appointments.
Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health Dr Rosena Allin-Khan was visiting the Bloom Building in Birkenhead in Wirral to discuss Labour’s plans to deliver mental health support across the country.
The Bloom Building is run by the Open Door Charity, which hosts events as well as community mental health support. Set up in 2011, it now helps over 1,000 people a year.
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In September 2021, Labour committed to making mental health treatment available within a month as well as recruiting 8,500 new staff and providing a counsellor in every secondary school. This would mean at least 26 new members of staff at schools in Wirral.
Across Cheshire and Merseyside, Labour said 32,350 adults and over 15,000 children were on waiting lists and 6,360 referrals closed before someone got treatment using local NHS data from December 2022.
The Labour Party also pledged to set up an accessible mental health hub in every community, which Dr Allin-Khan said would avoid a “postcode lottery the way it currently is nationally when it comes to mental health.”
When asked whether that could mean more than one hub on the Wirral, Dr Allin-Khan said: “I think it’s really important we don't duplicate work, that we wouldn’t take away much-needed funding from people already doing incredible work who are experts in their own communities.
“Suffice to say when we are in Government, we will be looking at each community individually, working out what the needs are and work hand in hand with fantastic organisations like Open Door.”
Dr Allin-Khan said Labour would focus on prevention, adding: “If we get to people early in a way they can relate to like they do here at Open Door, that is the way we bring down waiting times. That is the way we improve services already for people before it gets a lot more expensive and costly down the line when people lose the ability to work, people lose their livelihoods and very often their lives.”
If a Labour government is elected at the next general election, Dr Allin-Khan said she would work with the goverment departments as well as on a local level to deliver the plans.
Dr Allin-Khan added: “For us the key word is partnership and it is local communities that know their own communities the best. So it’s not about dictating what happens top down but working in every different community with the organisations and councils that already exist and looking across at what is it you need, how can we help, and how can we work together?”
Dr Allin-Khan, who still works shifts in the A&E department at St George’s Hospital in London, said she was seeing the impact of poor mental health on a regular basis.
She said: “We are seeing children coming in younger and younger self harming talking about wanting to take their own lives, absolutely desperate and their families are really desperate.
“Their parents are giving up work to be on suicide watch because they’re just not able to get that help so the pledge of people being able to get the help they need actually started, not just a holding appointment, but the help they need started within a month though bold is deliverable and necessary.”
Dr Allin-Khan said Labour would look at replicating what the Open Door Charity does elsewhere in the country. Labour said the plans would cost £1.016bn but would fund them through increasing VAT on private school fees and closing a tax loophole for private equity fund managers.
She added “We are very clear this is bold and it is not going to be easy. It isn't just about recruiting new staff, it’s about retaining the ones we already have, who are leaving in their droves, who are feeling utterly burned out and undervalued.”
This would all be delivered within a five-year term according to Dr Allin-Khan. She said: “All of these things ultimately though we’re confident we’ll be able to deliver because currently a teacher or GP can make a credible referral to CAMHS and in some cases up to 50% of those children that have credible referrals have had their cases shut down before they’ve even had their first appointment.
"We need to stop that.”
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