Goulding and Fry lend their star power to our campaign
STARS including Stephen Fry and Ellie Goulding have shown their backing on social media for the Evening Standard’s Young London SOS campaign to highlight the crisis in child and adolescent mental health in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
With an additional 500,000 children requiring help this year, according to the Centre for Mental Health, on top of the one in six children identified by the NHS as already experiencing a serious mental disorder, we have teamed up with Place2Be, the UK’s leading provider of school-based mental health services, to help them support more pupils and more schools. Stephen Fry retweeted the Evening Standard’s main post to his 12.6 million followers, along with the comment: “Any initiative that can help with this problem is to be welcomed I reckon.” Singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding also retweeted
the main post to her 6.5 million followers, as did London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan to his 1.1 million followers, and Love Islander A&E medic Dr Alex George tweeted his 183,000 followers.
BBC newsreader Kate Silverton retweeted too, adding: “I know first-hand the services @Place2Be provides in schools because I am training to become a children’s counsellor with them.”
Baroness Armstrong, chairwoman of the Lords Public Services Select Committee, also gave her support, calling it “an important campaign”.
She added: “I know of a 13-year-old boy who is a sport fanatic and who is self-harming. I know of others who spend much of the day in bed very withdrawn.
“Others are trying to sneak out to see friends, raising tensions within the family. This crisis will blight the lives of these children for years, unless urgent action to support them is taken.”