Government research shows that a significant number of children (15%-20%) experience significant levels of emotional or behavioural problems. Access to both statutory and voluntary services can be difficult, with long waiting times to be assessed and inadequate help provided.
Each week two people, most of them teenagers and young adults, are taking their own lives.
A significant number of children and young adolescents who experience mental health difficulties will have their teachers and families as their only health resource.
Due to the inadequacy and paucity of services, parents and teachers are struggling to understand and cope with the explosion of child and adolescent mental health problems.
Similarly, there is no effective model to help people identify the most common mental health issues experienced by children and put them into a simple framework from which teachers and parents can easily identify them.
This results in children and adolescents unable to find solutions to the most common mental health problems they are experiencing.