Hull Mental Health Campaigner Heads To Parliament
Sally Burke is calling for better provision for young sufferers in our region and will today meet the Shadow Health Secretary to discuss the issue.
A Hull mum campaigning for more support for children with mental health problems will take her fight to Parliament today.
Sally Burke has to travel to Sheffield to visit her autistic and suicidal teenage daughter. She's being kept in a secure mental health unit there because of a shortage of beds in East Yorkshire.
Sally is now calling for better provision for young sufferers in our region and will today meet the Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, to discuss the issue.
She told Viking FM:
"We've got a number of children at the moment that are out of town, being cared for all over the UK and away from their families. These are children, not adults, youngsters that need their families while they recover from such an illness and they're trying to do it on their own and it's just unfair, it's not possible.
"When your child is in hospital you expect to see them every day, even twice a day to care for them, support them and be there for them and it's just not possible to try and do that with the distance. It's not just about the money, it's the energy and the emotional draining it has on the whole family and especially on Maisie.
"Recently she's had a really, really low patch and she's been trying to self-harm even more and so we have been trying to visit her every day. Somebody has been trying to support her to pick her up and let her know that even though she's there and so low, that we all still love her and she's not alone. It's had a big toll on the whole family.
"Services have been cut, people are not educated enough and even GPs don't recognise the signs in children of mental health or if they do refer a child for counselling the waiting lists are so long that parents are going out of their minds. I've had all kind of parents reach out to me on Facebook and it's an outrage, it's an outrage for our young people.
"Every large city should have the Tier 4 which is the inpatient facilities for children and Hull is a large city. Hull alone has over 200,000 people and with the East Yorkshire, we are a population of 600,000 so we do fit that remit of needing a unit."