Early signs of mental health problems in children are being missed, as are opportunities to act to help those children, according to a Scottish Parliament committee.

Early signs of mental health problems in children are being missed, as are opportunities to act to help those children, according to a Scottish Parliament committee.

A report from Holyrood's Health and Sport Committee claims that despite an agreed national framework to develop child and adolescent mental health services, progress is slow and a shortage of experts is resulting in lengthy waiting lists and patchy services.

The report draws particular attention to apparent "neglect" of under fives, with a lack of early monitoring of their mental wellbeing.

MSPs on the committee blamed changes to the role of health visitors and criticised the Review of Nursing in the Community (RONIC), which will abolish health visiting as a separate profession, replacing it with that of community nurse. The committee said the changes had been counterproductive, in areas piloting RONIC.

With babies often no longer seeing a health visitor once they are eight weeks or older, and a drastic drop in the number of health visitors, vital opportunities to assess children and intervene where necessary are being missed, members concluded.

The committee's report, published today, states: "The importance of identifying mental health problems in the under-fives was an important theme in this inquiry. Disturbingly, the committee uncovered evidence that this group is neglected."

Committee convener Christine Grahame MSP said: "We heard evidence that substantial damage has been done by cutting numbers of health visitors, the very people who would have noted signs that merit intervention in the under-fives. We need urgent action to help what is a vulnerable group."

The report also uncovers slow or unclear progress on implementing the national framework to improve access to child and adolescent mental health services.

There is still insufficient access to specialist beds for children and adolescents with mental health problems, for example. "The consistent message was that the framework is a very well-considered policy - at no point was there any suggestion that it needed to be improved or otherwise revised, only that it should be implemented," the report states.

Meanwhile levels of provision of specialist staff are drastically low. A national standard of 20 child mental health workers per 100,000 of the population was established in 2006, but the figure is only eight per 100,000 in NHS Lothian, 4.5 per 100,000 in NHS Lanarkshire and 13 per 100,000 in NHS Dumfries and Galloway, with similar shortages in Aberdeenshire and Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Waiting lists in many areas are unacceptable, the committee concluded. In NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, for example, 59% of children and adolescents wait over eight weeks to see community mental health teams, while recent figures showed 16% had been waiting over a year.

"The Committee is deeply concerned at the extent of the waiting time problems in different parts of the country. This is of particular concern, given the suicide rates in Scotland," the committee argues.

Ms Grahame added: "Child and adolescent mental health services clearly need champions, having been a Cinderella service for many years. We need more drive in implementing these policies, especially from the NHS and local authorities."