Alison McGovern, the Minister for Social Care and Mental Health, gave the keynote speech at the Youth Access conference in Camden, according to the text published on GOV.UK. She said the government's forthcoming mental health strategy would be the country's first in 15 years and would be published soon.
Strategy priorities
McGovern said the strategy would expose what she called a terrible lack of progress in treating serious conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It would also respond to the position of young people, especially young women, facing illnesses such as eating disorders and a worrying rise in self-harm. She said it would bring to the fore the long waiting times some children and young people face for treatment.
She added that the strategy could not be for the NHS alone. According to the speech, it "must give equal weight to the assets we need in our communities to give young people their social life back". She said preventing mental ill health matters as much as treating it, and that taking part in work, college, culture, sport, art and society is as valuable as any script a doctor can write. She said support should work equally well for people who are autistic, have ADHD, are LGBT+ or black, or come from other overlooked communities.
Funding and services
McGovern said the government will spend £16.3 billion on mental health services this year, a record and an increase of £180 million on last year. She said thousands of additional mental health workers have been recruited since 2024, and that mental health support teams will be in schools everywhere by 2029.
She also cited a plan for 59 mental health emergency departments and £343 million for 100 community-based mental health centres.
Early support hubs
McGovern said the Department of Health and Social Care has provided over £20 million in top-up funding for 24 early support hubs since 2024. That includes £7 million this year, which she said will support at least 30,000 additional interventions. She argued that young people should not have to reach crisis or secure a formal diagnosis before getting help.
Youth mental health and a personal account
Citing evidence from the Fonagy review, McGovern said the proportion of young people with a mental health condition has risen from one in six, when she was growing up, to one in four today. She said this generation is not weaker than earlier ones and that the circumstances they face have changed.
She framed her own story as an example of lived experience in policy making, saying she hoped young people had heard in recent months that politicians do not regard them as snowflakes. She spoke of her anxiety, which she said can bring panic attacks, and of her father's first bout of cancer in 1992, which she said came at a difficult time for her family. She said that after she arrived in Camden to study at UCL, her tutors were kind, and that she learned from them that every young person needs people who can listen.
