Question Time on BBC One last night featured a debate around the NHS and its mental service provision, a topic raised by a father in Dartford, Kent, who waited two years for a referral for his child
A dad shared the heartbreaking story of how crippling anxiety – as a result of Covid-19 – turned his daughter “the shadow of her former self” in a poignant moment on Question Time.
The audience member expressed concern at the provision for mental health services in the NHS, detailing how his daughter was unable to leave the family home at times as she waited two years for a referral. The care now, four years on, is “patchy” and “uncoordinated,” the dad told the panel in Dartford, Kent.
It led to Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to concede this part of the NHS system is “failing” but he vowed Labour is planning to invest to improve it – despite this week’s spending cuts. The MP said his party has already put £25billion extra into the NHS and further investment is expected.
“The system is totally failing, and I am so sorry to hear about your daughter. My second daughter has been in hospital all week and I know how hard it is even when they are getting the care. I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that you can’t even get the care that you need,” Mr Jones, who represents Bristol North West, said on the topical BBC show.
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The Mirror recently highlighted the issue, laying bare cases of vulnerable children, severely depressed or suffering from eating disorders who are facing NHS wait times of up to four years. The experiences we flagged in our recent feature mirror that of the man in Dartford, who said he was eventually forced to take a private route to help his daughter.
But he stressed most people “cannot be in that position” and must suffer the issues the NHS faces currently instead. The father added: “It is completely inconsistent across the country, which really does worry me. There is still no end to this, every day we are dealing with it but at the moment we worry about the lack of funding, we worry about the fact that we just don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.”
The panel, which also consisted of shadow Cabinet Office minister Richard Holden MP, Daisy Cooper MP, who is deputy leader and treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the journalist and broadcaster Camilla Tominey, and the financial trader-turned equality campaigner Gary Stevenson, expressed their thoughts to the dad but recognised cases like his and happening all too frequently.
Labour says it is working through its spending review now but Mr Jones, himself a father of three, vowed money will continue to go into the NHS. He continued: “This is not what the NHS was created to do. The NHS was created to be there when you need them, and the fact is we’ve got to put more money into the system, we’ve got to make sure we are spending that money more effectively, we’ve got to be hiring those additional members of staff that we need, which is what we are absolutely committed to doing.”