Parliament publishes FNF's submission on Children and young people's mental health.
In February we made a written submission in response to a call for evidence by the Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee, after they launched an inquiry into Children and young people's mental health. The topic has been much covered in media in recent years, but rarely from the perspective of issues relating to family separation, which affects 36% of children before they reach 16 years of age.
The Government do not have a coherent strategy for dealing with separated parents and people are left to rely on adversarial family courts that are often ill-equipped and incapable of meeting their or their children’s needs and result in diminished mental health. We drew the Committee's attention to the mental health risks to children who are in single parent care - 27% greater than in joint parental care after separation and only 3% points worse than in nuclear families. Many of you will also have experienced the damage to your children's mental health caused by children being weaponised in family disputes. We, therefore, set out an outline of how more coherent Strategy for Separated Families might address these issues that are essential for the mental health of our children.
The Committee received a great many responses and our February 2021 submission was published on 29th June. The volume of submissions means that the Committee have not yet prepared a report of their findings.
You can download our written submission on children and young people's mental health here or read it online here.
There are some formatting problems that arose when our file was posted on the Parliamentary website. We will try to help the admin team there to sort it out to make it easier to read.
There have been 80 submissions listed (so far as at 3rd July 2021)). With so many documents to go though it would be helpful if anyone affected by these issues is in the constituencies of the MPs listed below, who make up this Committee, then please get in touch with them, share your story and draw their attention to the issue and our submission,
Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP - Conservative South West Surrey
Paul Bristow MP - Conservative Peterborough
Rosie Cooper MP - Labour West Lancashire
Dr James Davies MP - Conservative Vale of Clwyd
Dr Luke Evans MP - Conservative Bosworth
Barbara Keeley MP - Labour Worsley and Eccles South
Taiwo Owatemi MP - Labour Coventry North West
Sarah Owen MP - Labour Luton North
Anum Qaisar-Javed MP - Scottish National Party Airdrie and Shotts
Dean Russell MP - Conservative Watford
Laura Trott MP - Conservative Sevenoaks
If you are from any other constituency, you can still approach your MP and ask them to make representations to the Committee members above. You can find details of who your MP is using your postcoce - here.
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