I visited Netherwood Academy to discuss Barnsley CCG’s MindSpace initiative, which aims to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing through focusing on supporting young people, their families and schools, identifying and working on things like anxiety, depression, and self-harm.

Supporting young people’s mental health is crucial, particularly through prevention and early intervention, and I’m pleased to see the CCG taking such a proactive approach through the MindSpace initiative.

It was a pleasure to meet pupils at Netherwood Academy who spoke about how much the initiative has helped them. You can find out more about the MindSpace initiative here: https://wearemindspace.com/

More widely, around one in ten children in our country today have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem, yet just 8% of mental health budgets are spent on children and young people.

It’s time that mental health was given the same importance as physical health. This Government must end its chronic underfunding of our NHS and provide more funding for mental health services here in Barnsley and right across the country.