Local policy

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s children and young people’s mental health strategy 2022 – 2025 is the most recent local strategy for children and young people’s mental health. A series of reports were published to support this strategy, which covered priorities, a needs profile, service mapping, stakeholder insights, and strategic connections. The priorities were used to guide this chapter of the mental health needs assessment. It also built on the findings of the East of England Children and Young People’s Mental Health Needs Assessment, which was completed in 2022 (Pari, 2022).

A ‘Year 1 Update’ of this strategy was published in November 2023.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Health and Wellbeing and Integrated Care Strategy

The Health and Wellbeing and Integrated Care Strategy (2022-2030), developed by the Joint Health and Wellbeing Board of Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council, aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the local population. It has three main goals:

Increasing the number of years people spend in good health
Reducing inequalities in preventable deaths before age 75
Achieving better outcomes for our children

This strategy set four priorities for achieving these goals:

Our children are ready to enter and exit education prepared for the next phase of their lives
1. Increase the number of children who show a good level of development (school readiness) when they enter education.
2. Reduce the number of 16- to 17-year-olds not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET).
3. Reduce inequalities in both these outcomes.
Create an environment for people to be as healthy as can be
1. Achieve a 5% decrease in childhood overweight/obesity by 2030.
2. Reduce childhood overweight/obesity to pre-pandemic levels by 2026.
3. Reduce adult overweight/obesity levels in pre-COVID-19 times by 2030.
4. Every child in school will meet the physical activity recommendations.
5. Achieve a 10% increase in the number of adults who undertake 150 minutes of physical activity per week by 2030.
6. Reduce inequalities in overweight/obesity.
Reducing poverty through better employment, skills and housing
1. Reduce relative poverty, for example the proportion of children living in relative poverty.
2. Deliver improved quality and availability of housing that meets health and wellbeing needs, for example increasing the supply of affordable housing for key workers and the proportion of local people in safe and secure accommodation.
3. Achieve improved employment opportunities and outcomes, for example through better jobs and employability skills provision.
Promoting early intervention and prevention measures to improve mental health and wellbeing
1. Increase the proportion of children and young people who score a high mental wellbeing score on the annual school survey (as measured using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale).
2. Increase the proportion of adults who report a ‘good’ or ‘very good’ score for their life being worthwhile in 2030 compared with 2021/22.
3. Reduce the proportion of children and young people who need to be referred to mental health services.
4. Increase understanding of what people can do, and what choices they can make, to best support their wellbeing and the wellbeing of those they care about.
5. Improve awareness of where and how people can access help and information to prevent mental health problems escalating.

Other relevant strategies and reports

Other strategies and needs assessments in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have outlined mental health need.

Year	Strategy/report	Summary
2015	Local Transformation Plan 2015 – 2021	Provided a ‘collective vision for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to address the emotional and mental health needs of its children and young people’s population’ (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Integrated Care System, 2022e).
2015	Corporate Parenting Strategy 2015 – 2018	Focused on 5 key areas, including ensuring young people in care have good health and wellbeing. Set a target that 90% of children have a health assessment within 20 days of entering the care system.
2019	Mental Health and Wellbeing Pre-birth to Age 25 years Needs Assessment November 2019	Estimated that there were 34,000 children and young people with a mental health condition in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in 2019 and that this would increase by 10% by 2024. Produced a detailed data pack, which highlighted groups of children and young people at greater risk of experiencing poor mental health. Identified priority areas where Cambridgeshire and Peterborough performed worse than the national average, including hospital admissions due to self-harm, numbers of ‘children in need’ due to abuse or neglect, the proportion of 16- to 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) in Peterborough.
2019	Making SEND everybody’s business (2019 – 2024)	Set three key priorities: that special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is everybody’s business; identifying and responding to needs early; and delivering in the right place at the right time. Highlighted multiple ‘key concerns’, including: the need to ensure SEND is not just the concern of a few, the lack of co-ordinated offer at transition points from services working together, and the need for more robust joint commissioning processes. Targets around mental health included that the number of children and young children with a diagnosable mental health condition receiving treatment increases in line with NHS targets.
2019	Best Start in Life Strategy 2019-2024	This strategy aims to improve life chances of young children (from conception up to age 5): It highlighted inequalities across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (such as for children taking free school meals). Whilst there are a range of services available for families, best practice is not available for all and there is a need for a more integrated approach. Highlighted key gaps in mental health services: lack of integration, training for professionals in schools, and a lack of staff training in both physical and mental health. Also raised issue of long waiting lists and challenges faced by those who do not meet service thresholds.
2019	Health and Wellbeing Strategy 2019 – 2024	This strategy identified helping children achieve the ‘best start in life’ as key priority. One outcome for measuring this was ‘developing an integrated approach for older children and adolescents.
2021	Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Local Transformation Plan: 2021 refresh and overview of 2015 – 2021	This report reflects on local progress towards the recommendations of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. It highlighted the following risks: Increase in demand and acuity across all areas of need, and longer waiting times due to increased demand. Challenges of sufficiently skilled workforce. Uncertainty of future demand and long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenging health and social care landscape. Ensuring sufficient funding is available to address current demand and historic funding shortfalls.
2021	Strong Families, Strong Communities; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Early help strategy, 2021	Early Help provides multiagency support for families. This strategy outlined four goals for Early Help, including providing earlier support for children and young people experiencing poor emotional wellbeing to stop issues from becoming entrenched.
2022	07-2022 Covid Impacts and Needs Assessment Evidence Pack 2	Reviewed the impacts of COVID-19 on children and young people, including the mental health impacts. National data indicated that the initial lockdown had a strong negative impact and increased social isolation; and local data from Cambridgeshire schools showed that students had poorer wellbeing compared to before the pandemic.

Table 4: Local developments in strategy and understanding of children and young people’s mental health

Other local strategies that are not specifically focused on children and young people’s mental health, but are highly relevant to this topic, include: