Susan Kramer: "The Cassel is one of very few centres in the UK that can assess and treat the really severe cases of families with mental health problems." Photograph: Martin Argles
Some of the most vulnerable children in our society must be youngsters in families where a parent or a sibling suffers from a severe mental health disorder, writes Susan Kramer.
You would have thought, listening to government ministers or reading The Children's Act, that helping these children and their families would have been at the top of the priority list. Keeping a family together is the best result for children unless the circumstances leave no other safe option.
But our battle to save the family programme at the Cassel hospital in Ham (Richmond) shows the reality of government to be very different. The Cassel is one of very few centres in the UK that can assess and treat the really severe cases of families with mental health problems. The cases are so complex that the programme has to be residential. But the history shows that families can respond brilliantly and with support like this make new lives. The alternative for most families is removal of the children for foster care and adoption, often with their problems untreated, and little help for the parent or sibling with mental health problems.
But local authorities and PCTs don't want to pay the costs of a service like the Cassel. Once courts required them to do so but then a ruling from the law lords on the Children's Act removed that ability. Even legal aid to try through the courts is now just about impossible to access. And what is the government doing? - pretty much washing its hands of the whole matter and leaving it to local authorities and PCTs which simply do not have the budget for these cases even though they are few and far between.
Frankly, this is a service that should be funded centrally not locally. The cost in the long run of leaving families in turmoil, with children in and out of care and mental health issues unresolved has to be far greater than the cost of treatment.
But surely pure humanity should be the deciding factor in a civilised society. How can government look at some of the most disturbed children and families in the country, recognise that they can be helped - and then walk away.
· Susan Kramer is MP for Richmond Park
