Half a Million Children Waiting: The CAMHS Crisis Across the UK
I trained as a clinical psychologist in the NHS and spent the early part of my career working in CAMHS. I left in 2012, not because I wanted to, but because I had two small children and the work-life balance had become impossible. I told myself it was temporary. I set up an independent practice, assumed things would improve, and thought I would find my way back to CAMHS.
Fourteen years later, colleagues and families who attend my clinic tell me things have not improved. CAMHS staff are highly skilled and care deeply, but the numbers I share below are symptoms of a system under impossible pressure, not any failure of mental health professionals.
If your child is really struggling with mental health difficulties, you will already know how this feels. Maybe they can’t sleep, won’t go to school, or have started hurting themselves. You speak to the GP, get a GP referral, and then nothing. Weeks pass, then months. For too many families across the UK, this is the reality.
Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) exist to catch children at their lowest. But right now, the net has more holes than fabric.
The National Picture for CAMHS
According to the NHS Benchmarking Network, the latest data on mental health services shows that on 31 March 2025, 255,000 children and young people across the UK were on a waiting list for community mental health care. The waiting times broke down as follows: around 30% waited fewer than four weeks from referral to treatment, 31% waited between four and twelve weeks, 9% waited 13-18 weeks, and 27% waited more than 18 weeks. In other words, more than a quarter of children on waiting lists are waiting the equivalent of an entire school term or longer before anyone begins to help them, particularly a young person.
The picture worsens when you look at the four nations individually.
England: A Crisis by Numbers
England carries the heaviest load. The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) reported that at the end of November 2025, there were 550,610 children and young people on mental health waiting lists in England. Of those, 30% (165,887) had been waiting for more than two years, and 53% (289,722) had been waiting for more than one year.
For a twelve-year-old, two years is a sixth of their entire life.
The same RCPsych analysis warns that this lack of prioritisation risks turning treatable conditions such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders into lifelong, recurring mental health conditions, and that desperate young people are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for support in the absence of professional care.
For those who did eventually receive treatment, a Rethink Mental Illness review of 2022-23 NHS data found that the 305,000 children who entered treatment that year waited an average of 108 days, roughly three and a half months.
More shockingly, around 6,300 children had been waiting for over two years, with an average wait of more than three years before finally receiving treatment.
Meanwhile, some services were seeing children within just four days for outpatient assessments.
The variation is pretty staggering, and what it amounts to is a postcode lottery. Your child’s chances of getting timely help from England’s Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CYPMHS) depend on where you happen to live.
The BMA has also reported that there were 385,540 children and young people still waiting for a first contact from community mental health services in the three months to March 2025 alone, up 14.4% since the previous year.
The Human Cost
The statistics are abstract until you understand what waiting actually does to a young person in some cases.
In a 2022 YoungMinds survey of almost 14,000 young people, 26% said they had attempted to end their lives as a result of having to wait for urgent help. More than 71% said waiting put a serious strain on their relationships with family and friends. More than half said their mental health got worse while waiting.
YoungMinds has also published NHS data showing that 78,577 young people referred to CAMHS waited over a year for treatment in 2023/24, an increase of more than 52% on the previous year. Of those, 34,191 waited more than two years.
These are not failures of the individuals working within the system. They are failures of a system that was never adequately resourced for the scale of need it now faces.
Scotland: A Target Met, but Thousands Still Waiting
The Scottish Government set a standard that 90% of children and young people should start support and treatment within 18 weeks of referral, and since December 2024, Scotland has been meeting it. The 18-week target was first achieved in the final quarter of 2024, a milestone that had eluded services for years.
In the quarter ending March 2025, Public Health Scotland reported that 91.6% of children started treatment within 18 weeks. Half of those starting treatment waited five weeks or fewer, an encouraging figure. There were 4,674 children on the waiting list at the end of that quarter.
By the quarter ending September 2025, performance remained steady at 91.5%, with the waiting list reducing to 4,006 children. Half of those starting treatment still waited five weeks, unchanged from the previous quarter.
Experts at the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland have cautioned that reported figures for specialist CAMHS do not capture waits after a child’s first assessment, nor do they include the rapidly growing neurodevelopmental pathway for conditions like autism and ADHD.
Wales: Quick Assessments, Slower Treatment
Wales has restructured how children access mental health services, routing many through Local Primary Mental Health Support Services (LPMHSS), rather than directly into specialist CAMHS. According to the Welsh Government, the vast majority, 96.2%, of young people referred to these local services are now assessed within 28 days. That is a genuine and sustained improvement, and a reflection of the effort being made to get children an assessment quickly.
However, a quick assessment does not mean treatment begins quickly. Data cited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists shows that in June 2025, around 67.6% of under-18s started their therapy sessions within four weeks of assessment. That means roughly one in three children is waiting longer than a month to begin therapy after completing their initial assessment.
A new CAMHS specification is being developed across Wales to standardise care and reduce variation between health boards, though implementation timelines remain unclear.
Northern Ireland: Incomplete Data, Persistent Need
Northern Ireland’s picture is the hardest to read, for administrative rather than clinical reasons. As health boards have rolled out a new digital record system called Encompass, data gaps have opened up across multiple trusts.
The Department of Health’s most recent quarterly release for March 2025 reported that the Western Trust had 507 children waiting for their first appointment for a CAMHS assessment, of whom 354 had been waiting more than nine weeks. The Southern Trust had 272 children waiting, with none exceeding nine weeks, a significant improvement on previous quarters. Data for Belfast and Northern Trusts remained unavailable due to the ongoing Encompass rollout, leaving gaps in assessment waiting times and making a full picture impossible to draw.
It is worth noting that the March 2025 quarterly publication was the last to be released in this format. The Department of Health has stated that no future updates will be available until full quality assurance on the new data system is completed.
The CAMHS Workforce Behind the Numbers
Waiting lists do not grow in a vacuum. According to the NHS Benchmarking Network survey, community CAMHS teams now support a caseload of 1,093 children per 100,000 population, down from 1,639 in 2021/22, while the workforce has fallen from 94 to 79 staff per 100,000. Vacancy rates are running at approximately 14% in community services and 21% in adolescent inpatient services, pressures echoed in the broader system including adult mental health services.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists workforce census found that of 842 available consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist posts in England, nearly one in five (19.2%) were vacant, with a combined vacancy-and-locum rate exceeding one in three.
Children typically remain on caseloads for around 35 weeks and have approximately 10 contacts during that period. The arithmetic is grim: fewer staff, higher demand, longer waits. The mental health professionals who remain in post are not failing children. They are holding the line under conditions that no amount of professional dedication can fully compensate for.
What Families Can Do
For parents and carers in the middle of this, especially those with older teenagers facing the transition to adult services (AMHS), the numbers can feel like a wall. While systemic change is the only real fix, there are practical steps you can take now.
- Push for clarity on your child’s position. Ask the referring service what the average wait is in your area and request to be notified if your child reaches a crisis threshold that should trigger earlier review.
- Seek interim support. Many charities and community services do not require a CAMHS referral: YoungMinds, Mind, and school counselling services can provide bridging support. If you have the financial means or private health insurance, it is also worth considering independent support from a qualified therapist such as a clinical psychologist. Make sure your therapist is fully accredited with the HCPC (Health and Care Professions Council). The ACHiPPP directory (the Association of Child and Adolescent Healthcare Psychologists in Private Practice) lists accredited clinical psychologists working privately with children and young people across the UK, and allows you to search by area.
- Document everything. If your child’s needs escalate while waiting, keep a record of everything, including updates to their care plan. This can support requests to be seen more urgently.
- Prioritise self-care. The stress of waiting can be overwhelming, so take steps to practise self-care and maintain your wellbeing.
- Use your voice. Commissioners and NHS boards do respond to feedback from families. Sharing your experience, whether with your MP, your local trust, or charities who collate evidence, helps build the case for change.
The YoungMinds #EndTheWait campaign is actively pushing the Government to act. The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Mental Health Watch tool provides regularly updated data broken down by region, so you can see how your local area is performing.
The Bottom Line
Across the UK, over 550,000 children are waiting for mental health services in England alone. Scotland has met its 18-week target but still has thousands waiting. Wales is assessing young people quickly but not always treating them so. Northern Ireland is navigating a data vacuum just as its services face rising demand.
The common thread running through every part of this story is not a lack of commitment from the people working in it. It is a lack of investment in the system they are being asked to sustain.
Demand for support and treatment has surged, staffing has not kept pace, and children are paying the price. Behind every number in every quarterly spreadsheet is a child who needed help and was told, in effect, to wait.
The people who trained to do this work did so because they wanted to help. Fourteen years after I left, that is still what my former colleagues want too. They deserve better, and so do the children and families waiting for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Dr Lucy Russell is a UK clinical psychologist and Clinical Director of Everlief Child Psychology. She qualified as a clinical psychologist from Oxford University in 2005 and worked in the National Health Service for many years before moving fully into her leadership and writing roles.
In 2019 Lucy launched They Are The Future, a support website for parents of school-aged children. Through TATF Lucy is passionate about giving practical, manageable strategies to parents and children who may otherwise struggle to find the support they need.
Lucy lives with her family, rescue cats and dog, and also fosters cats through a local animal welfare charity. She loves singing in a vocal harmony group and spending time in nature.
