SCOTLAND’S leading mental health charity has warned over cuts to care, and said “good intentions” from the Scottish Government were not being backed with sufficient funding.

In a briefing for MSPs ahead of a meeting of the Health and Sport Committee on Tuesday, the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) said the government’s draft budget had failed to prioritise mental health.

While spending on mental health is rising, it is falling as a share of the overall budget, SAMH said. Meanwhile a £30m increase in spending in Scotland is dwarfed by the £1bn the UK Government has committed to spending by 2022.

Warning that three children in every school classroom will suffer mental health problems before they are 16, the charity called for spending on child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) to be more than doubled from £55.6m to £152m.

Meanwhile SAMH is also calling for £9m to be spent providing counselling services in all secondary schools and 24.4m giving all teachers training in mental health issues. However in many areas provision is actually being cut, it says. According to the charity, some Integration Joint Boards – responsible for directing health and social care services on behalf of councils and health boards – are making massive cuts to services.

Glasgow IJB is slashing £3.9m from mental health services. SAMH claimed this accountsfor half of its entire programme of savings, although a spokesman for the board disputed this. Meanwhile NHS Tayside has cut the amount of funding it passes on to Perth IJB for mental health by 10 per cent, the SAMH document notes.

Carolyn Lochhead, Public Affairs Manager at SAMH said the Scottish Government needed to find the funding to make its claims on mental health credible.

“SAMH is concerned that funding for mental health is not sufficient to achieve the ambitions set out in the Mental Health Strategy and it is not keeping pace with investment elsewhere in the UK,” she said.

“Children and young people need more help. Spending on children and young people’s mental health is less than 0.5% of the total NHS expenditure.”

Meanwhile Scotland – unlike other UK countries – offers no guarantee of access to counselling in schools.

Investment in services for children saves money by intervening before problems escalate, Ms Lochhead said, it takes courage for both children and adults to ask for help. However people have to ask repeatedly, in different settings, before receiving any help, and even then , must often wait a long time for it, she said. “The wellbeing of our country depends on a system that has an ‘Ask Once, Get Help Fast’ approach. The preventative steps we put in place now for a mentally healthy Scotland will benefit us all in the longer term,”

Scottish Government mental health minister, Maureen Watt, said: “Mental health is a priority for us which is clearly shown by our investment of £150 million over five years in improving mental health, with additional funding reaching £35 million by 2022 for 800 additional mental health workers in key settings like A&Es, GP surgeries, custody suites, and prisons.

“In 2017/18 for the first time NHS investment in mental health will exceed £1 billion, and we are working with boards to deliver sustained improvements and to ensure services are designed and delivered in the most efficient way. We recognise the importance of giving every child and young person access to emotional and mental well-being support in school and we are commencing a review of Personal and Social Education, including counselling in schools.

“We want people to get the right help at the right time, expect recovery, and fully enjoy their rights, free from discrimination and stigma. Whether in schools, workplaces, communities or care facilities, the strategy will see us take forward an initial 40 actions to shape change.”

A spokesman for Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership did not dispute that health services in the city face cuts in excess of £3m, however said this was not close to half of more than £20m savings the partnership is faced with making: “Given the scale of the financial challenge facing the partnership there is very limited scope for any part of our service to remain unreformed at this time,” he said.