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Referrals and access to services for children and young people, 2016 - 2025

Number of new referrals for children and young people to secondary mental health services and the number of children and young people accessing secondary mental health services each month, by region, between 2016 and 2025.
Date published:
10 November 2025

Our response

This analysis presents the number of new referrals to secondary mental health services where the person was aged between 0 and 17 at the time of referral. Data is also presented on the number of people accessing services where the person was aged between 0 and 17 at the time of the care contact. The data presented is for region for 2016 to 2025.

Please note the following when using this analysis:

  • this data is sourced from the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS).
  • the data has been provided by month for the time period April 2016 to August 2025
  • the data provided is a count of new referrals and not people. It is possible to sum the number of referrals across multiple months to arrive at a total figure, however, the data cannot provide a number for how many people were referred to services as one person may have had multiple referrals
  • this analysis is based on referrals where the age at referral received date is between 0 and 17. The data provided includes all team types
  • accessing services for any particular month has been defined as receiving at least one contact within that month where the age at care contact date was between 0 and 17
  • data has been provided at region only
  • all figures have been rounded to the nearest 5

Download the data

Last edited: 10 November 2025 1:52 pm