Access to NHS mental health for children remains a ‘postcode lottery’

Children’s commissioner report says some areas spent as little as £16 per child and others as much as £165 on child and adolescent mental health. (Model posed photo) Photograph: Jon Challicom/NSPCC/PA

Children’s access to specialist NHS mental health services in England remains “a postcode lottery”, with huge differences in spending and referrals depending on where families happen to live, according to a report.

Overall, it said referrals of children and young people dropped as a result of disruption caused by the pandemic, at a time when more of them were struggling with mental health than ever before.