World Mental Health Day takes place today (10th October) and the theme this year is ‘mental health is a universal human right’. The day provides an opportunity to raise awareness around mental health, highlight the positive work that people are doing across different sectors and create support for further change.
In this blog, Elsa Corry-Roake from Just for Kids Law reflects on what it means for children, particularly vulnerable children, in England when these rights are violated.
Just like anybody else, children have the right to the best mental health possible and should be supported to have positive mental well-being in all aspects of their life. These rights are enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which the UK ratified in 1991. This means that the UK Government has promised to ensure that these rights are realised for all children. However, the pandemic and its aftermath, the cost-of-living crisis and over a decade of funding cuts to children’s services, mean that for many children these rights are often not being respected.
