Children experiencing a mental health crisis are being forced to spend up to three days in A&E before a specialist bed becomes available, NHS figures show.
The findings, published on Wednesday, have sparked outrage among healthcare professionals, with one children’s nurse describing the delays as ‘frankly barbaric and warning they’re ‘becoming far more normal’.
To conduct the research, Freedom of Information requests were submitted by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to NHS trusts across England. They revealed the number of under-18s in mental health crisis waiting at least 12 hours for admission to a specialist unit has more than trebled, rising from 237 in 2019 to 802 in 2025.
Three trusts – Barts Health and Lewisham, Greenwich in London and Morecambe Bay in Cumbria – reported cases where children waited three days or more in A&E before a bed became available.
A senior A&E paediatric nurse in a London hospital said: ‘My job is to look after poorly children but we simple don’t have the capacity or the training to deal with seven or eight mentally ill children a day. I so often feel powerless. It is absolutely soul-destroying.’
Another explained that A&E is the worse place for children in mental health crisis as it can ‘exacerbate their trauma.’ They added: ‘A&E is just seen as this big receptacle for all children who are dysregulated or in crisis. But A&E is not respite for children with mental health concerns.’
The RCN estimates almost 500,000 under-18s have sought help for mental health problems in A&E departments in England since 2019. Of the NHS trusts surveyed, two-thirds responded, collectively reporting 330,367 cases between 2019 and 2025.
When extrapolated to include trusts that did not respond, the RCN projects the true figure is closer to 492,350 children.
Dr Sam Jones, research officer for mental health at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: ‘Alongside rising levels of poor mental health, the nature of need is changing fast. Problems are more complex and severe, more younger children are affected and rates of self-harm and eating disorders continue to rise. Yet services remain dangerously underfunded, leaving healthcare professionals unable to meet growing demand.’
The research, which was announced during the RCN’s annual conference in Liverpool, comes just days after the government unveiled it will developed a ‘once-in-a-generation’ mental health strategy.
During the conference, Nicola Ranger, general secretary of the RCN, said the new strategy will ‘die on the page if social determinants of mental health are not given parity, nit just politically, but in pure investment terms too.’
Ranger added: ‘It’s absolutely vital the government rapidly rolls out mental health emergency departments across the country to put a stop to these damaging and potentially traumatising A+E visits. Children and young people deserve appropriate treatment in a safe and dignified environment.
‘But I also want us to fully get a grip on the underlying causes of mental ill health among the young, including poverty, as well as poor and insecure housing.’
Image: mohamad azaam/UnSplash
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