Children and young people asked to consider group therapy as huge waits affect one-to-one support on Isle of Wight
The charity say they're working to widen their services to prevent the long wait times
Children and young people on the Isle of Wight are being encouraged to try group therapy as one-to-one support experiences huge wait times.
At a recent council meeting it was revealed that 400 are on the list - with the average wait time for initial contact from services exceeding the national target of four weeks.
The Isle of Wight Youth Trust says the charity wants to work with parents to help get the right care for their children.
Meghann Ayres, Clinical Lead for the Isle of Wight Youth Trust said: "We have experienced significant demand over the last few years.
"It's forever increasing.
"Mental health has always needed the support, but we've noticed since Covid, demand is just increasing.
"We were seeing it more for older age children, but actually we're seeing a big increase in primary age children needing mental health support."
The charity say with the demand, they're working to increase the variants of support that they can offer.
Jo Dare, CEO of Isle of Wight Youth Trust, said: "We're doing our bit to widen that offer, and what we need is for people to trust us.
"We go through an assessment process with everybody, and during that process, some really careful thinking and matching takes place on what would be the right offer of support for that child.
"It's about everybody being very open minded to say I'll give it a go and if it doesn't work, then I trust that you'll move me onto something that will work better for me.
"But at least if we've made that first step, then we've started to help children sooner.
"It gives us that chance to get that young person the right support, and equally importantly, at the right time, with much less wait."
Recent data from NHS England says in 2023/2024, over 910,000 young people were referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS).
Of these children and young people, sixty-four percent did not receive treatment within four weeks, and 78,577 waited over a year.
The charity say funding is important in helping the services.
Ms Dare added: "We are capped in terms of the support we can give by the amount of resource we have.
"If you have more resource, you can help more children more quickly.
"For me, I think sometimes because of the fact that we deliver what is part of a health service, it can be quite easy to forget at times that we are a charity and that there are other charities in a similar position to us.
"But those charities need that support and backing."