NO CUTS TO CHILDREN’S HEALTH SERVICES (CAMHS)
CAMHS CUTS REVERSED!
FOLLOWING TONIGHT’S VALENTINES PICKET on 14 February where we asked Mayor Steve Bullock and Cabinet to ‘have a heart’ and presented our 11:300petition, the Mayor and Cabinet tonight said that the council was REVERSING ITS DECISION ON CUTS to Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CAMHS) on the basis of change of circumstances since the decision was made. The next two years cuts would not happen now. Campaign members clapped in response. Councillor Alan Hall also made a supportive speech.
THANK YOU to parents and young people who played such a role in the campaign, to many Labour Councillors, the three Lewisham Labour MPs, and to our video makers and editors, to all who signed our petition and attended our events.
THANK YOU LOBBY
Our lobby on 21st February will be a celebration of our campaign and to say thank you. Mee5 at 6.45 outside the Civic Centre at Kewisham Town Hall, Catford.
WE RECOGNISE THAT HEARTLESS GOVERNMENT CUTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS PRESSURE ON COUN
Pictures from our Valentines protest and handing in the petition 14 February 2014
We asked Lewisham Council to reverse their cuts
Download our initial briefing
Download our leaflet here and our poster here
Download our detailed point by point response to the Council briefing here and appendix here
PETITION – PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE
Please sign and share the petition click here
Download a paper petition here
PUBLIC MEETING 6 FEBRUARY 2018
“Friends
Because of Parliamentary commitments I can’t be with you. But I wanted to send my solidarity to you and congratulate the health campaigners of Lewisham who do all of us proud.I know how serious this situation facing CAMHS in Lewisham is as Vicky Foxcroft, Ellie Reeves and Heidi Alexander have kept me updated. I pay particular tribute to Ellie Reeves who even today was raising Lewisham CAMHS cuts directly with Jeremy Hunt in the Commons. Sadly Jeremy Hunt’s reply to Ellie’s excellent question was hopeless.
As I understand it nearly £100,000 will be cut from CAMHS this year in Lewisham. The truth is under the Tories, children and young people with diagnosable mental health problems are being let down by overstretched and underfunded Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services which is dosgracefully being cut back.
We know that 3 in 4 children with mental health conditions do not get access to the support they need, and that average waiting times between referral and assessments average at nearly 2 months.[*] Severe underfunding has resulted in money for CAMHS failing to reach its intended target, with over half of CCGs actually planning to reduce the proportion of their budget spent on mental health and many others siphoning off money to plug shortages elsewhere.
Shockingly, English children are being sent as far away as Scotland for treatment, due to an acute shortage of mental health beds.
This simply isn’t good enough for a Prime Minister who describes mental health provision as a “burning injustice”. Despite Theresa May’s promises, mental health injustices are not ending under this Tory Government but getting worse.
We know that early intervention is absolutely critical in tackling mental health issues, with 50% of mental health problems being established by age 14. Therefore, Labour will increase the proportion of mental health budgets spent on support for children and young people, and end the scandal of children being treated on adult mental health wards. And crucially we will ring-fence mental health budgets to ensure funding reaches the frontline. Overall we would be putting an extra £5 billion into the NHS this year which would mean more money for CAMHS in Lewisham.
For too long mental health provision has been neglected, cut back and poor inadequate private sector provision has been allowed to go unchecked.
There is little that is more important than the mental health of our children. I want to see public services for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services strengthened. So we will deliver a public universal NHS with more investment in mental health services, and I pledge that the next Labour Government will deliver parity of esteem [for mental health] after years of Tory failure to do so.
Jon Ashworth, Shadow Secretary of State for Health & Social Care
[* Lewisham non-emergency routine waits for initial assessment are far longer; but there is also a second wait after assessment for treatment of a further 4+months]
- Make sure you’ve shared our petition with all your Lewisham friends
- Write to your local Councillor
- Come and Lobby the Mayor and Cabinet meeting on 14 February at 17.15pm when we will be asking them to ‘Have a heart’ and reverse the CAMHS cuts
- Come and protest outside the full Council meeting on 21 February at 6.45pm
BRIEFINGS
The Council published a briefing for MPs in response to our briefing.
Download our detailed point by point response to the Council briefing here and appendix here
THE Children and Young People Committee of Council voted to refer cuts to Mayor and Cabinet (on 14th February) after presentations from Campaigners and Unite members.
PHOTOS OF LOBBY OF COUNCIL MEETING ON WEDNESDAY 17 JANUARY AT 6.45PM
Outside Lewisham Town Hall. The main purpose to leaflet the councillors and others going in. They will not be discussing the cut at the meeting but we will get out points across the Councillors and others going into the meeting.
MODEL MOTION FOR USE IN LABOUR PARTY AND TRADE UNIONS
model motion about budget cuts to CAMHS
We are appalled at this government’s insistent claims that it is funding the NHS adequately and taking child mental health seriously. Neither is true – in reality there is a double attack on children’s services:
• cutting back on NHS spending each year with so called ‘efficiency saings’
• up to 60% cuts in funding to local authorities, on which mental health services and social
services depend.
The Government boasts about Future in Mind ‘extra funding’ But this is only for specific purposes. It does not replace the huge cuts already made to core funding of Child & Adolescent
Mental Health (CAMHS) funding.
Government austerity cuts have already forced Lewisham Council to make £153 million budget cuts with more to come. Children’s mental health funding has fallen by close to 10% over two years and now Lewisham Council will be making over £150,000 cuts to this service.
This desperately needed CAMHS service cannot be run properly on so much less money
Patients, parents, CAMHS staff and the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign do not accept Lewisham Council’s assertion that child mental health needs can be met in other ways.
Lewisham Council needs to speak up and lead the way, fighting for young people and saying what we know to be true: that these cuts will hit vulnerable children and families very severely.
• Up to six staff will lose their jobs – there will be hundreds fewer appointments available
• More referrals will be declined as ‘thresholds’ to access treatment get even higher
• Treatment will be rationed
• Waiting lists – already unacceptably long – will grow longer
• Each job lost is a clinician’s caseload of real children in need untreated
• Young peoples’ problems will reach crisis points without timely appropriate treatment.
• Unwell young people attending A&E in crisis will face longer, distressing waits
• Patients are already being sent to other hospitals, often miles from London.
These mental health cuts affect real children in Lewisham, in real need, left untreated.
Lewisham CAMHS is a well-respected service – skilled clinicians with high morale, chooing to work here, valuing the support they have given to schools, GP surgeries and other local facilities. However, the cuts over the last years have taken their toll – already many of these services are no longer available; it CANNOT get worse.
Lewisham has higher risk factors contributing to poor child mental health than the national average. Referrals to this service, level of need, risk and distress that young people are experiencing are all increasing. Young people are victims of 8 years of austerity from this government.
We have to speak out!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! PLEASE HELP US:
• Sign our petition and help us share it on social media – petition address
• Join us in lobbying Councillors and Council meetings
• Ask your MP to take up your concerns
• Join the lobby at Kaleidoscope on xxx
• If you are a Labour Party member, please put a motion opposing these cuts and get the Council to take a stand
• Come to our public meeting on Tuesday 6 February at New Cross Learning, 285 New Cross Road, London SE14 6AS (Nearest station New Cross Gate, buses 36, 136, 53, 177, 21)
