Children in mental health crisis waiting up to three days in A&E for specialist bed in England

Children and young people in England having a mental health crisis are spending up to three days in an A&E unit before they get a bed in a specialist unit, NHS figures reveal. One children’s nurse who works in an emergency department said such long waits for under-18s who were in acute distress were “frankly barbaric” but “becoming far more normal”. Some of those who end up stuck in A&E become so troubled and disruptive that staff are increasingly using medication to sedate them to manage their behaviour. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the delays highlighted a “catastrophic system-wide failure” by NHS mental health services to intervene to stop school-age children ending up in crisis. Seeking help at A&E was often “damaging and potentially traumatising” for them, it said. Freedom of information requests by the RCN to NHS trusts in England also found that the number of under-18s in mental health crisis forced to wait at least 12 hours before being admitted to a mental health unit had more than trebled, from 237 in 2019 to 802 in 2025. Three trusts – Barts Health trust and Lewisham and Greenwich trust, both in London, and the Morecambe Bay trust in Cumbria – told the union that children and young people had spent three days or more waiting in their A&E for a bed. One A&E nurse said such long waits were “extremely distressing” for the patients involved and for the staff looking after them. …