Challenges in Meeting the Mental Health and Wellbeing Needs of Refugee Children and Young People in England: Evaluation and Critique of Policy and Guidance

Abstract

The authors of this chapter examine, evaluate and critique one single key document—the Healthy Child Programme: Pregnancy and the First Five Years of Life, together with The Healthy Child Programme 5–19 years—which incorporates both health policy and health practice guidance in England. In doing so, there is engagement with the document’s underpinning political ideologies and principles. The authors focus in particular upon issues of mental health and wellbeing for refugee children and young people, and consider the extent to which these have been recognised and addressed in this key document. Writing from a children’s and young people’s rights perspective, the authors assert that mental health and wellbeing need to be understood not only as the absence of mental illness, but also as encompassing the notion of positive wellbeing. They argue the need for a rights-based, preventative approach in addressing, responding to and promoting issues of mental health and wellbeing for refugee children and young people in national health policy and health practice guidance.