Youth Mental Health and Guidance Services in Secondary Schools: Motion [Private Members]
Seanad Éireann — 2023-06-21
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Fintan Warfield (SF), Cultural and Educational Panel

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The far-too-often stated sad reality is that there has been a failure of mental health care under this Government. Waiting lists for CAMHS have nearly doubled in recent years with a record level of children waiting for first-time appointments. All this is at a time when Government announced that it plans to reduce CAMHS teams across the State from 73 to 50 and ask already strapped parents to drive greater distances to access basic supports for their children.
Sinn Féin welcomes any measures that seek to address the crisis in youth mental health services. We commend the Green Party for using its time for mental health today. We know that youth mental health care takes place in a broad context that includes both acute and primary or early intervention care. We also recognise the value of intervening early and supporting young people in the communities where they live, learn, work and play. I am, in particular, keen to welcome the calls in the motion to restore the ex quota status of guidance counsellors in all secondary schools whereby hours are calculated on the basis of the number of students in the school and to reduce the ratio of full-time guidance counsellors in order to increase the number of guidance counsellors available to our students. I commend the Green Party for proposing that.
However, while we acknowledge the unique and important role that all teachers play within the education system in providing for the holistic development of students, it is nonetheless important that mental health support is provided by trained and educated professionals. It must not fall on guidance counsellors to fill the gap caused by our failure to provide effective mental health services for young people. Responsibility for meeting the mental health needs of young people is already fragmented across services depending on the severity of need and the age of the young person. As it stands, there are already inconsistent relationships between GP medical services, Jigsaw and secondary and acute care services. This fragmentation has resulted in a system that inappropriately depends on already stressed parents becoming case managers for their children in what can be complex medical cases. We have already seen that such fragmentation allows for vulnerable children to slip through the cracks or become lost altogether with little accountability. Instead of further fragmenting mental health services and burdening overstretched schools, we think the Government must address the elephant in the room and properly invest in community mental health services for young people where services are properly integrated and sufficiently staged across primary and community care and specialist mental health services. Local teams can ensure patients are seen by expert mental healthcare professionals as quickly as possible and the development of such services requires multiannual workforce planning, capital investment and accountability reforms.
Young people accessing mental health services deserve access to the right care in the right place at the right time. That is something that all of us here can agree on. With the best will in the world, teachers cannot and should not be expected to fill the gaps in the current system. Addressing the crisis in our youth mental health services requires a fundamental shift that will prioritise multiannual workforce planning, capital investment and accountability to improve access and reduce waiting times. I thank Senator Garvey and the Green Party for dedicating their precious Private Members' Business time to youth mental health. They should be commended for that.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2023-06-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-06-21