Record referrals show why early support cannot wait

When I last wrote about this, I described how our BeU Hubs teams work with children and young people long before they reach crisis point. Since then, the national picture has become harder to ignore. Referrals to children’s mental health services in England passed 1 million last year, and the most recent NHS data shows average waits now topping 300 days.

Last month, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health reported a 36% rise in children attending A&E in mental health crisis since 2019, with some of the steepest increases among children as young as six. Doctors were clear that A&E was rarely the right setting, but that a lack of support in the community meant families often had nowhere else to turn.

Waiting lists are rising. So is the case for hubs like ours

I don’t read any of this as a system that has failed to notice the problem. Government has continued to invest in the response, including the £7 million extension announced in February for the 24 Early Support Hubs across England, and, more recently, £343 million to open 159 new NHS mental health centres, several of them in Nottinghamshire, designed to catch problems earlier and closer to home. That’s a genuine and welcome shift in where investment is going.

Oliver Godfrey said,

“None of this is complicated. Reach children before things escalate, and don’t wait for a crisis to prove the need is real.”

Our own BeU Hubs sit within the Early Support Hubs programme, recommissioned for a further year. Since April, our teams have worked with 22 schools across Nottinghamshire and Nottingham City, reaching more than 600 young people.

Analysis of our Year 6 transition workshops, carried out this year by psychology students at the University of Nottingham, found that 91.5% of pupils rated the programme good or excellent, alongside a measurable improvement in wellbeing scores and daily functioning. One pupil summed up what that meant in practice: “it made me feel a lot more confident about going to secondary school.”

Every one of those conversations is one a specialist service didn’t have to have, at a time when specialist capacity is already stretched thin.

Access shouldn’t depend on which school a child attends

Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) are reaching more schools every year, now covering almost 80% of secondary schools in England, with a government commitment to reach every school and college by 2029.

BeU Hubs sits alongside that rollout rather than in place of it. At the heart of our work is the belief that every child deserves the same access to mental health support, regardless of which school they attend. We work across Nottinghamshire, partnering with schools not yet covered by an MHST, helping meet the demand for mental health support among our young people who might otherwise go without.

At the start of this contract, we reached out to nearly 150 schools across Nottingham City and County, including rural areas where wellbeing services can be harder to reach. We also deliver to whole classes rather than individual referrals, with the option to opt out rather than opt in, so every child in the room gets the same access to support, whether or not their family would have sought it out on their own.

The evidence exists – what’s missing is certainty

Early Support Hubs were extended for a year in April. What happens after that hasn’t been decided. If we know that local, approachable support helps children earlier, relieves pressure elsewhere in the system and gives young people skills they’ll use for years, why fund it as though its future were always in doubt?

Oliver Godfrey added,

“Certainty isn’t a luxury. It’s what lets a child believe we’ll still be there next term, and the one after.”

That question matters most at points like the move from Year 6 into secondary school, one of the more stressful transitions a child goes through, where the right support can change how the following years unfold.

What makes hubs like ours effective is also what makes them different from the systems around them. Support comes to young people in places they already know and trust, without a referral, a diagnosis or a threshold to cross first. In Nottinghamshire, that looks like a classroom workshop, a confidential 1-2-1 with a practitioner, and a follow-up session four weeks later to see if the co-produced coping strategies are working, or to adjust them if needed.

These are innovative interventions precisely because they reach children early, before a problem becomes a referral. They rarely make the news. But it’s this kind of support, delivered before things escalate, that keeps children off the waiting lists in the first place.

If you’re a school, family or young person in Nottinghamshire wanting to find out more about BeU Hubs, visit beuhubs.co.uk or call 01204 570 999.