It comes as the crisis in young people’s mental health continues to worsen
By Yuri Prasad
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Thursday 20 November 2025
Mental health workers in Manchester took action earlier this year to protect services
Mental health drop-in centres which provide vital support for young people could close when government funding stops next year.
The early support hubs help people under 25 with mental health issues and are designed to intervene to stop them developing more serious problems.
The centres are a potential lifeline for people who are struggling. But funding for 24 of them across England is set to end in March next year.
A poll of 16 early support hubs, carried out by the charity Youth Access, found half expect to close when funding ends. More that two thirds said they will reduce services significantly.
Three quarters expect to make staff redundant and only two centres have secured partial funding to continue providing services.
The cuts come as young people are already waiting far too long to access essential mental care.
Anya, from London, waited for more than a year for an initial appointment when she first sought help aged 14 years old.
“Getting into therapy takes way longer than getting an initial appointment. I was 17 by the time I was seen,” she told Socialist Worker.
The long wait for treatment made her situation worse, says Anya, who is now 22 years old.
“At the start, you have hope that this is just me getting into the system and maybe it just takes a bit of time,” she said.
But, she adds, every time you change services, the long delays continue.
“When you transition out of the initial therapy back to say a community team, or when you’re transitioning into adult services, that’s when you realise that everything takes ages—and they mess up the paperwork.
“You just become disillusioned with the whole process.”
The drop-in centre closures come as the crisis in young people’s mental health continues to worsen.
Youth Access says the proportion of young adults with a common mental health condition has increased by almost 50 percent since 2007 to over a quarter by 2023.
And NHS research published earlier this year shows that financial insecurity and unstable jobs is a key driver of the crisis. People with debt and those without jobs were more likely than others to have a mental health condition.
Living in the most deprived fifth of areas in England was associated with an increase in of common mental health conditions, suicide attempts and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Young Futures Foundation says that a 73 percent cut in funding for children and youth services since 2010 has also hit hard.
Those now axed services were best placed to offer help and early intervention for young people in mental distress.
Anya says that if mental health services across the board had better resources, patients would have a much better experience. “I think mental health services should be a continual thing, rather than a one off,” she says.
But this latest round of cuts will only take us further away from the services we all need.
