Adam Hawksbee is Deputy Director of the think tank Onward.
Few abstruse public sector acronyms cut through to normal conversations. So when Onward asked a focus group assembled in the side room of the Milton Keynes Premier Inn to tell us about the biggest challenges facing young people, I was shocked.
“CAMHS”, sighed one parent. Others nodded knowingly.
For the uninitiated, CAMHS stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. It is the part of the NHS that looks after young people with serious mental health issues.
And right now, it is buckling under pressure. Waiting times in England are up by two thirds in the last two years, averaging 21 weeks – but stretching up to a staggering three years in some areas. Ed Dorrell, a pollster, reports that the struggling service could well be a major issue at the ballot box.
When it comes to reducing demand on the state, the risk from this trend could not be clearer: without action to support this cohort of young people, they will seek ever greater levels of support.
Today, the challenge is referrals to CAMHS. Tomorrow, it will be employability programmes as young people struggle to get into work or hold on to jobs, addiction services as they develop substance misuse problems, or wider social services as they struggle to form and support families.
We need to act now to prevent these issues worsening. But the means to do that is not the NHS, but schools.
The youth mental health crisis built up during the pandemic: one in six children aged five to 16 had a probable mental health problem in July 2021, up from one in nine four years prior.
But the immediate shock of lockdowns and home schooling came on top of more worrying medium-term trends. Academics like Jonathan Haidt have highlighted the corrosive impact of social media on self-worth, particularly among young girls.
The clearest impact of this crisis is on school attendance. Research from the Centre for Social Justice shows that in the summer 2022 school term, 140,000 children were severely absent – a post-pandemic rise of 134 per cent.
If the answer to a lack of mental wellbeing among young people is ever more medicalisation, we will create a system that is both completely unaffordable and wildly ineffective.
Of course, some of these young people will have serious medical conditions which will require professional treatment. But a much larger number are not sick, they are profoundly unhappy.
Loneliness, sadness, anxiety, a lack of self-worth and purpose: these are all very real challenges faced by young people. We fail them, and the taxpayer, if we turn instinctively to the NHS.
Tackling these problems requires a stronger sense of connection. Young people need better relationships with their peers and friends. We might think of loneliness as a problem afflicting the old, but 40 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds report often or very often feeling lonely, compared with 27 per cent of over-75s.
Young people need a stronger link to their community too. Although Onward research identified an upswing in feelings of neighbourliness among young cohorts, too few participate in local civic life. They also need to develop a clearer sense of purpose: a connection with their future, and a calling that builds a sense of forward momentum.
This is where schools come in. One of the great success stories of the Conservatives’ period in government is reforms to primary and secondary schooling, through the acceleration of academisation and insistence of evidence-based methods like phonics.
But there has been less of a focus on the role that schools can play in building the resilience of young people and rooting them in their communities.
To prevent a snowballing youth mental health crisis, this is where attention now needs to turn. What does that mean in practice?
Any attempt to crowbar resilience or connection into the curriculum should be avoided. These are skills and competencies that are learnt outside the classroom and around lessons, through the relationships young people build with peers and adults.
But three steps can be taken to build a more rounded education.
First, we need to boost participation in extracurricular activities. OECD research has found that sports, music, and drama help children improve their ability to work in a team, sense of responsibility, and self-confidence.
But today they are the reserve of too few young people. Under half (45 per cent) of children in the wealthiest decile, and only a quarter (26 per cent) of the most-deprived, attend youth clubs, scouts, or girl guides weekly; young people in the South East are twice as likely to say they play music than young people in the North East, and 40 per cent more likely to do dance.
Onward report Beyond School set out how we can unlock a reserve army of community groups to boost the provision of these activities through a new enrichment premium. And the Government’s pilot of a longer school day, announced at the Budget, creates more space to experiment with an expanded extra-curricular offer.
Second, we need to help young people articulate themselves.
The philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger describes children as “tongue-tied prophets”, arguing that education should be about providing them with the language to articulate their ideas. In a similar vein, helping young people to express their fears and anxieties can unburden them – particularly after a period locked away with only their parents.
Therefore oracy programmes, such as debating clubs or speechmaking competitions, should be a more central part of our approach to education.
While it might sound niche, oracy has been championed by a range of advocates from Nick Gibb to Alistair Campbell; the Education Endowment Foundation says that programmes focussed on the importance of spoken language and verbal interaction have “very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence”.
Third, we need to use schools to strengthen relationships between young people and adults that can serve as role models.
There is strong evidence behind the positive impacts of mentoring schemes, both for at-risk children but also those struggling with a sense of direction. The Cares Family have built intergenerational relationships that tackle loneliness among the young and old – what could a version in and around schools look like?
We should get parents more involved with schools: just five per cent of parents in the UK are engaged in school governance, and six per cent in physical or extracurricular activities, compared to 14 per cent and 23 per cent in the United States, 17 per cent and 19 per cent in Estonia, and ten per cent for both in Germany.
And as we get nearer to an election, we could think even bigger: Onward report The Kids Aren’t Alright called for a new mass-participation national civic service scheme for young people, which could be developed with, and delivered through, schools.
We are facing a crisis of connection, resilience, and wellbeing among young people. If we don’t address them all, demands for the state will dramatically increase. Headteachers and their teams can’t do this alone – we need to enlist families, community groups, faith forums, and new institutions such as Family Hubs.
But if we harness the potential of our schools to build relationships, character, and purpose, then we will have happier children, a grateful taxpayer, and a stronger society.
A creaking CAMHS is the canary in the coalmine. To reduce demand on the state, we need urgently to reform our schools.
Adam Hawksbee is Deputy Director of the think tank Onward.
Few abstruse public sector acronyms cut through to normal conversations. So when Onward asked a focus group assembled in the side room of the Milton Keynes Premier Inn to tell us about the biggest challenges facing young people, I was shocked.
“CAMHS”, sighed one parent. Others nodded knowingly.
For the uninitiated, CAMHS stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. It is the part of the NHS that looks after young people with serious mental health issues.
And right now, it is buckling under pressure. Waiting times in England are up by two thirds in the last two years, averaging 21 weeks – but stretching up to a staggering three years in some areas. Ed Dorrell, a pollster, reports that the struggling service could well be a major issue at the ballot box.
When it comes to reducing demand on the state, the risk from this trend could not be clearer: without action to support this cohort of young people, they will seek ever greater levels of support.
Today, the challenge is referrals to CAMHS. Tomorrow, it will be employability programmes as young people struggle to get into work or hold on to jobs, addiction services as they develop substance misuse problems, or wider social services as they struggle to form and support families.
We need to act now to prevent these issues worsening. But the means to do that is not the NHS, but schools.
The youth mental health crisis built up during the pandemic: one in six children aged five to 16 had a probable mental health problem in July 2021, up from one in nine four years prior.
But the immediate shock of lockdowns and home schooling came on top of more worrying medium-term trends. Academics like Jonathan Haidt have highlighted the corrosive impact of social media on self-worth, particularly among young girls.
The clearest impact of this crisis is on school attendance. Research from the Centre for Social Justice shows that in the summer 2022 school term, 140,000 children were severely absent – a post-pandemic rise of 134 per cent.
If the answer to a lack of mental wellbeing among young people is ever more medicalisation, we will create a system that is both completely unaffordable and wildly ineffective.
Of course, some of these young people will have serious medical conditions which will require professional treatment. But a much larger number are not sick, they are profoundly unhappy.
Loneliness, sadness, anxiety, a lack of self-worth and purpose: these are all very real challenges faced by young people. We fail them, and the taxpayer, if we turn instinctively to the NHS.
Tackling these problems requires a stronger sense of connection. Young people need better relationships with their peers and friends. We might think of loneliness as a problem afflicting the old, but 40 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds report often or very often feeling lonely, compared with 27 per cent of over-75s.
Young people need a stronger link to their community too. Although Onward research identified an upswing in feelings of neighbourliness among young cohorts, too few participate in local civic life. They also need to develop a clearer sense of purpose: a connection with their future, and a calling that builds a sense of forward momentum.
This is where schools come in. One of the great success stories of the Conservatives’ period in government is reforms to primary and secondary schooling, through the acceleration of academisation and insistence of evidence-based methods like phonics.
But there has been less of a focus on the role that schools can play in building the resilience of young people and rooting them in their communities.
To prevent a snowballing youth mental health crisis, this is where attention now needs to turn. What does that mean in practice?
Any attempt to crowbar resilience or connection into the curriculum should be avoided. These are skills and competencies that are learnt outside the classroom and around lessons, through the relationships young people build with peers and adults.
But three steps can be taken to build a more rounded education.
First, we need to boost participation in extracurricular activities. OECD research has found that sports, music, and drama help children improve their ability to work in a team, sense of responsibility, and self-confidence.
But today they are the reserve of too few young people. Under half (45 per cent) of children in the wealthiest decile, and only a quarter (26 per cent) of the most-deprived, attend youth clubs, scouts, or girl guides weekly; young people in the South East are twice as likely to say they play music than young people in the North East, and 40 per cent more likely to do dance.
Onward report Beyond School set out how we can unlock a reserve army of community groups to boost the provision of these activities through a new enrichment premium. And the Government’s pilot of a longer school day, announced at the Budget, creates more space to experiment with an expanded extra-curricular offer.
Second, we need to help young people articulate themselves.
The philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger describes children as “tongue-tied prophets”, arguing that education should be about providing them with the language to articulate their ideas. In a similar vein, helping young people to express their fears and anxieties can unburden them – particularly after a period locked away with only their parents.
Therefore oracy programmes, such as debating clubs or speechmaking competitions, should be a more central part of our approach to education.
While it might sound niche, oracy has been championed by a range of advocates from Nick Gibb to Alistair Campbell; the Education Endowment Foundation says that programmes focussed on the importance of spoken language and verbal interaction have “very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence”.
Third, we need to use schools to strengthen relationships between young people and adults that can serve as role models.
There is strong evidence behind the positive impacts of mentoring schemes, both for at-risk children but also those struggling with a sense of direction. The Cares Family have built intergenerational relationships that tackle loneliness among the young and old – what could a version in and around schools look like?
We should get parents more involved with schools: just five per cent of parents in the UK are engaged in school governance, and six per cent in physical or extracurricular activities, compared to 14 per cent and 23 per cent in the United States, 17 per cent and 19 per cent in Estonia, and ten per cent for both in Germany.
And as we get nearer to an election, we could think even bigger: Onward report The Kids Aren’t Alright called for a new mass-participation national civic service scheme for young people, which could be developed with, and delivered through, schools.
We are facing a crisis of connection, resilience, and wellbeing among young people. If we don’t address them all, demands for the state will dramatically increase. Headteachers and their teams can’t do this alone – we need to enlist families, community groups, faith forums, and new institutions such as Family Hubs.
But if we harness the potential of our schools to build relationships, character, and purpose, then we will have happier children, a grateful taxpayer, and a stronger society.
A creaking CAMHS is the canary in the coalmine. To reduce demand on the state, we need urgently to reform our schools.