To mark Children’s Mental Health Week, I wanted to reflect on the work I have been doing recently to highlight the battle many young people face to access mental health support.

On the 30th of January, I led a dinner hour debate on the topic of what assessment the Government has made of the recent concerns expressed by general practitioners that children and young people with mental health problems are unable to access National Health Service treatments; and what steps they will take to address them. I arranged this debate following a recent article in the Guardian, which revealed that a staggering 99% of GPs feared that under-18s would come to harm as a direct result of delays in their mental health care. You can read my speech from this debate here or watch it on parliament live here.

I have also been blogging about the worrying delays to children’s mental health treatment in Politics Home and the Lib Dem Voice.

“Seventy years after the creation of the NHS, families should not be forced to pay for the mental health care that their children so desperately need.”