An inspirational campaign launched by three bereaved fathers to raise awareness of suicide has won the backing of Chesterfield MP Toby Perkins.
The Three Dad’s Walking group consisted of three parents who have each lost a daughter to suicide who have walked between all four parliaments of the United Kingdom in order to campaign for suicide awareness and signposting to be made part of the National Curriculum with the intention of preventing suicides through better awareness of the support available.
Toby Perkins MP said; “Signposting, of course, only goes so far as the mental health crisis requires significant government action in order to provide people with the resources that they so desperately need. The mental health crisis should be so much higher on the political agenda with the suicide rate increasing in England to a staggering 10.5 people per 100,000 in 2021. This is an issue that affects the local community too with 73 suicides in Derbyshire in 2018 alone.”
Outlining Labour’s plan to address the current crisis in mental health services, Toby went on: ” Two-fifths of patients waiting for mental health treatment are forced to contact emergency or crisis services prior to receiving treatment, with one in ten ending up in A&E. 1 in 4 adults those who had to wait after their initial assessment did not begin treatment for three months or more.”
The waits for children’s mental health services, in particular, have been described as “agonising” by the Chief Executive of the Young Minds charity, with a BBC Freedom of information request revealing that 20% of children are waiting more than 12 weeks to be seen.
Keir Starmer has committed the next Labour Government to:
- Guarantee mental health treatment within a month for all who need it, setting a new NHS target, ensuring that patients start receiving appropriate treatment – not simply an initial assessment of needs – within a month of referral
- Recruit 8,500 new staff so that one million additional people can access treatment every year by the end of Labour’s first term in office
- Put an open access mental health hub for children and young people in every community, providing early intervention, drop-in services
- Provide specialist mental health support in every school, so that they can support pupils and resolve problems before they escalate. This plan would see a full-time mental health professional in every secondary school and a part time professional in every primary school
- Improve service quality, bringing in the first ever long-term, whole-Government plan for improving mental health outcomes, making early-intervention a reality, and broadening the range of services to those with severe mental health illnesses;
- Give mental health its fair share of funding, pledging that NHS spending on mental health will never fall and a fair share of mental health funding every time new funding is provided to the NHS.
Labour explained that they will fund the new measures by closing tax loopholes for private equity fund managers and removing the VAT exemption from private schools.
