VULNERABLE children suffering acute episodes of mental illness are being hospitalised hundreds of miles away from their homes.

No inpatient provision in Cumbria means under 18s who need specialist help have to be sent to units across the length and breadth of the country.

New information gathered using the Freedom of Information Act has revealed children as young as 11 have been sent to units in London and Edinburgh over the past two years because there is nowhere closeby for them to go.


Tim Farron Now Tim Farron, Westmorland and Lonsdale MP and leader of the Liberal Democrats, has urged top level healthcare bosses to look into the matter urgently.

Mr Farron, who has publicly backed the Evening Mail’s Healthy Young Minds campaign, which aims to improve access to specialist help for children and teenagers suffering mental illnesses, said: “Services like these need to be provided closer to home.

“Asking young people to be away from their home and then to ask parents, families or carers to have to travel, is unacceptable.

“NHS bosses must look at this as a matter of urgency,” he added.

The latest figures held by the Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group show 12 children and teenagers aged between 11 and 18 years old were held in tier four units in London, Middlesbrough, Bury, Cheshire, Prudhoe and Edinburgh during the 2013/14 year. The average length of stay was 12 weeks.

Last year, 14 children were hospitalised in Middlesbrough, London, Bury, Cheshire, Preston, Lancaster and Prudhoe – with the average length of stay rocketing to 24 weeks.

This is in spite of advice on best practice outlined within a government white paper published in March which states young people should be offered inpatient accommodation close to their homes and communities to minimise stress and aid recovery.

But yesterday Alison Tongue from NHS England, the body responsible for commissioning specialist tier four beds, said demand for specialised tier four care was not high enough in Cumbria to justify a dedicated unit for the county.

The organisation could not provide figures charting the overall cost of tier four care for children in Cumbria.

Alison Tongue, regional director for specialised commissioning (North), said: “The number of patients requiring specialised mental health service tier four services is very small.

“This highly specialised service is concentrated in a limited number of hospitals to a catchment area of more than one million people.

“Concentrating services in this way makes the best use of staff expertise and allows for training to be maintained ensuring paitents get the best outcomes,” she added.

Last month, a distraught Barrow father spoke of the devastation caused to his family when his 16-year-old daughter was hospitalised at The Junction, in Lancaster, for a combined stay of a year.

The 50-mile trek to visit her put a strain on the family while his self-harming daughter felt far away from familiarity and home comforts.

He said: “The fact there’s no tier four in this county is shocking.

“For a young kid going to Lancaster it is overwhelming.”

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