Despite a Government promise to prevent children with mental health problems being treated on adult psychiatric wards, the practice still continues, according to a new report.

The expose report has uncovered desperate problems with mental health services in the UK and has found hundreds of mentally ill children still not receiving adequate care in specialised units.

Only 15% of health trusts will be compliant with the Government’s commitment to separate child and adult mental health treatment by November 2008.

The report and its findings come from the Young Minds charity and Children’s Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green who has used his powers to force Primary Care Trusts to reveal the full extent of practices in their clinics and Psychiatric hospitals.

The ‘Out of the Shadows’ report states that child and teenage mental health services are over-stretched to the point that that 72% of inpatient referrals are being turned away. Young people are forced to travel hundreds of miles from their homes to find treatment and typically that treatment is carried out on adult wards.

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