Youth mental health: Experts by experience know how to fix the system

Over the summer, we had the opportunity to hear from young people, parents/carers, and mental health professionals about their views on the youth mental health system, how it works in practice, which parts are broken and what is needed to fix it. Throughout these conversations, one thing has been clear: these people are experts in the system and its flaws, and they have the answers. 

The problems 

We consistently heard about the uphill battle that young people and the people who care for them face in trying to access mental health support. We heard about a missed phone call meaning you go to the back of the queue, about having to fight to get schools to take parents’ concerns seriously, and about services that don’t feel welcoming or supportive. None of this will be a surprise to anyone who has worked to improve mental health support for young people. 

We’re mapping all of the factors that impact whether a young person can access the support they need. We’ve identified five types of factor, all of which play a part in a young person’s experience of trying to get help: 

• Personal factors: Firstly, you need to recognise you need support, and have the time and space to prioritise your mental health. You also need to trust that services will help you.  
• Support networks: Having receptive, understanding, and well-informed friends/family to help you access support is important. 
• Local context: Having the support you need available in the place you need it, with long-term, stable funding and support to services.
• Service capacity & capability: Having services that are well–staffed with trained, well-supported professionals. 
• Appropriate & flexible services: Having services that are accessible, flexible, person-centred, and reflect your needs. 

There are lots of factors within these, but these broad categories give us a blueprint for fixing the youth mental health system. We need to build a system that empowers parents and young people, gives them the knowledge that they need to navigate services, encourages long-term commissioning, and enables services to respond adaptively to the needs of different young people. 

The solutions 

The solutions we heard in our sessions are not rocket science.

We heard about more flexible referral pathways, shorter waiting lists, better joined-up services, more person-centred support, and less abrupt endings. But the system isn’t set up to make this happen. 

We also heard about services stretched to breaking point, discharging young people who miss a phone call so that they can move on to help the next person on the waiting list, and wanting to “keep clients” to meet commissioning KPIs, instead of referring young people on to other services that might be a better fit. 

This vision of better services isn’t all down to CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services) or local authorities. We know that local authorities are working to incredibly tight budgets, with limited staffing, and fighting to meet their statutory duties and meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable young people.  

Charities and funders can play an important role here, stepping in earlier to stop young people getting to the point of needing CAMHS support. This might not look like funding or delivering services directly–it could be signposting, encouraging mental health training in other youth services, or more joined-up advocacy about what provision is needed.

What are we doing next? 

We’re taking what we’ve heard and building a systems map. We want to show how all of these factors are linked, and how some reinforce or undermine each other. That will help us see which factors are key, and where we can make the biggest difference. 

We’ll be taking this systems map back to the brilliant groups of young people, parents and carers, and professionals we’ve heard from so far, and checking it with them to see what we have missed, and hear more about their ideas for solutions. We’ll also be speaking to funders, and thinking about what they can do to make these solutions a reality. 

We also know some groups of young people have very different experiences of mental health services, and how accessible they are, so we’ll be speaking to three groups of young people to see how the systems map relates to their experience, and find out which solutions might work for them. We will be speaking to young people with a physical disability, neurodiverse young people, and young people who have been excluded from mainstream school. 

Based on all of this, we’re looking forward to sharing the finalised systems map and our full report in early 2026. These will highlight the most important factors in whether young people can access support, and the solutions that people with experience of the system want to see. We hope this will help charities and funders know where in the system they can make the biggest difference.