‘My son is falling through the cracks of the child mental health system’

A six-year wait for ADHD treatment on the NHS highlights a growing crisis. One mother tells of her frustrations:

I wasn’t surprised by the children’s commissioner report out today, calling for urgent action to tackle waiting lists in mental health care for children.

Ten years ago, I received a call from my son's reception teacher. They asked me to come in and said he was showing some developmental delays, and autistic traits. Within six months my son, who is now 15, was diagnosed with autism and ADD (attention deficit disorder) and medicated.

Fast forward to his younger brother, and he has been languishing on a waiting list for six years.

The school referred him to CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) to be assessed for ADHD in November 2021. The school could see how much I was struggling and sent CAMHS an email each week asking where he was on the waiting list. Despite this, it took until October 2024 for him to be diagnosed with ADHD. By then he was in secondary school.

Something Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said really stuck out to me. She said: “The numbers in this report are staggering — but these are not numbers, these are real children.”

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Source: The Times, 19 May 2025