The surge in children's emotional distress triggered by the pandemic has evolved into a persistent and high demand for mental health services. As official NHS data and independent 2025 reviews confirm, the system is struggling to cope, marked by escalating referrals, extended waiting times, and intense strain on both emergency and specialist care. The mental health system is still urgently trying to address this sustained crisis.
NHS waiting-time statistics, released in early 2025, clearly evidence the escalating crisis in children's mental health services. Numerous Integrated Care Boards report a rise in referrals to secondary mental-health services, alongside increasing delays between referral and the initial appointment. Supporting reviews of the Children’s Commissioner’s 2024–25 briefing, confirm that while more children access services, a significant number still wait several months for assessment or treatment. Regulators and clinicians increasingly note the serious consequences of these delays; these include patient deterioration and a greater likelihood of children presenting in a crisis state.
Policy measures are starting to yield positive local results, most notably through the Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health programme which is expanding Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) in educational settings. The government confirmed in the 2025 Spending Review that it plans to expand MHSTs to cover 100 per cent of schools in England by the 2029/30 academic year. As of Spring 2025, more than 600 MHSTs are already operational, serving over 10,000 educational settings and providing access to 52 per cent of the total pupil and learner population. The expectation is that approximately 700 MHSTs will be active by Spring 2026. Additionally, local pilot projects including rapid access hubs, digital therapy, and enhanced liaison psychiatry in paediatric units have shown promise in successfully diverting children from Accident & Emergency (A&E) and into timely specialist care. However, these promising interventions are not uniformly distributed, frequently suffer from insufficient staffing, and lack the sustained, recurrent funding necessary for consistent, long term scaling.
A critical workforce shortage significantly limits services. A persistent scarcity of child and adolescent psychiatrists, specialist mental-health nurses, and psychological therapists exists, and recruitment and retention fall short compared to adult services. Reports published in 2025 stress that unless the government invests in training positions and retention packages over multiple years, the increase in the number of trained clinicians will be insufficient to meet the rising demand. This shortfall forces many local services to depend on already strained crisis teams and expensive agency staff.
Insufficient support has stark consequences. Emergency departments and paediatric wards struggle under the weight of increased mental-health presentations, often overwhelming liaison psychiatry teams. Families face protracted and stressful waits for specialist intervention. Analysts caution that this not only leads to poorer outcomes for children but also drives up system costs as preventable issues escalate into the need for costly inpatient care.
Effective tools and successful pilot programmes exist within the sector, but current capacity is insufficient to reach every child in need. If the NHS is genuinely committed to preventing a generation from entering adulthood burdened by untreated mental-health issues, they must dedicate 2026 to significant workforce investment and the expansion of proven early-help models. Failure to act will see the post-pandemic surge in need solidify into long-term systemic harm.
