Digital support is critical to tackle the children’s mental health crisis

Evidence-based digital support is essential to meet the demand on children and young people’s mental health services, writes Dale Greenwood, NHS clinical and strategic programme lead for North East London mental health support teams

One in five children in England are estimated to have a mental health disorder, with a wealth of socio-economic, cultural and psychological factors at play.

For many families, a diagnosis is the clearest gateway to accessing support, but this alone isn’t what’s stretching the system.

Whilst there are many challenges facing the NHS, a key barrier to meeting demand is its struggle to integrate scalable solutions into services that could strengthen capacity at the scale needed to keep pace with demand.

Investing in digitally-powered prevention and early intervention support could change the outlook for children and young people. The right tools could help services meet needs sooner at scale, reducing the likelihood that children go on to require complex care.

A needs-led approach to children’s mental health

A needs-led model – which prioritises early, flexible and proportionate responses to mental health difficulties – would allow support to be delivered sooner and reduce the number of children left on wait lists for complex care.

Such an approach demands a shift away from rigid, linear care pathways, towards models that put children and their families at the centre. Digital innovation has a pivotal role to play in powering this transformation.

For a digitally-native generation, tech-first solutions are often less stigmatising and more intuitive than traditional care pathways

Scalable, evidence-based tools can deliver personalised, needs-adjusted support quickly, meeting children where they are in familiar settings – whether in schools, communities or at home.

I’ve seen this in practice in a North East London primary school which successfully deployed a digital therapeutic as a preventative measure to support pupils’ mental health.

For a digitally-native generation, these tech-first solutions are often less stigmatising and more intuitive than traditional care pathways, increasing access and improving experience and outcomes.

Where are we today with digital therapies?

The NHS is taking meaningful steps in the right direction. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has approved several digital therapeutic tools for children and young people, such as Lumi Nova, which delivers cognitive behavioural therapy-based support for mild to moderate anxiety in children through an engaging game format; and SilverCloud – online support with anxiety and low mood for teens.

These interventions are accessible via digital devices, providing direct access to early support without the wait.

Digital tools strengthen early intervention and prevention initiatives, ensuring complementary support is available to children at scale during their day-to-day lives – when they aren’t interacting with a mental health professional.

In my experience, teachers embrace this additional support. They’re acutely aware of the demands on the system.

Yet pilots are often time-limited and funding priorities shift. If investment in innovation is not sustained in schools, it can create frustrations around the sustainability and long-term impact of these initiatives.

Considerations for integrating digital technologies

Despite promising progress, there are several challenges which must be addressed to ensure digital becomes a core part of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAHMS) offer.

• Funding constraints and lack of funding guidance: Support for digital innovation from policy and regulatory bodies like NICE are a critical first step, but adoption requires concrete incentives that encourage health and social care organisations to engage with new tech and ringfence resources to support implementation.
• Stakeholder training and buy-in: Successful digital integration depends on practitioners feeling equipped and empowered to use digital tools as part of their practice. In my experience, resistance can arise if clinicians and practitioners perceive the implementation of digital innovations as separate to their remit.
• Validation and assurance: Integrating a new digital tool in the NHS is a complex process. Lengthy governance requirements that currently must be repeated for every provider – from completing Data Protection Impact Assessments to ensuring Information Governance and Digital Technology Assessment Criteria standards are met – make it hard for digital tools to scale. Without streamlining these processes at a regional or even national level, the NHS will miss out on winning technologies and economies of scale which could transform service delivery.
• Equity and accessibility: Digital interventions must be inclusive by design. This means ensuring children with special educational needs and disabilities, from disadvantaged backgrounds, and with limited digital access are not left behind. When tools are designed for inclusivity from the start, the results speak for themselves.

The NHS 10 year health plan is clear: the shift to prevention, early intervention and support in the community is central to tackling the rising tide of mental health needs and releasing the pressure valve on an overstretched system.

Evidence-based digital support is not a panacea, but an essential part of the solution.

We must focus on building a system fit for purpose that prioritises early intervention and prevention throughout the whole spectrum of need

By embedding accessible, inclusive, needs-led digital support alongside services delivered by professionals, we can reduce waiting lists, ensure children and their families are not suffering unnecessarily, and give families more options, while meeting national ambitions around increasing access and reducing waits.

If we are serious about addressing the mental health crisis for children and young people, we must focus on building a system fit for purpose that prioritises early intervention and prevention throughout the whole spectrum of need – from early signs to crisis.

Digital tools – properly funded, validated, integrated and scaled – are critical to making this vision a reality.

Dale Greenwood is the NHS clinical and strategic programme lead for North East London Mental Health Support Teams, across North East London NHS Foundation Trust, East London NHS Foundation Trust and London Borough of Redbridge. He is an experienced NHS commissioner, programme manager and registered mental health nurse in CAMHS, with a masters in public health and more than a decade of experience leading service development and digital transformation projects to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people.