13 January 2026
On 13 January 2026, the BBC published their investigation into the growing number of young people accessing drug and alcohol treatment across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2024-25. Their report finds that:
- More than half of the 16,000 children in drug and alcohol treatment in the past year were 15 or younger.
- There were significant disparities in community care and lack of state-funded residential facilities for under-18s.
- National Drug Treatment Monitoring System data shows a 13% rise in under-18s seeking support in 2024-25.
An increase in young people entering treatment does not automatically mean more young people are using drugs or developing dependency. In fact, additional Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) funding provided to local authorities since 2022 may be helping more young people access support earlier, which is a positive step.
However, changing drug trends, including rising ketamine use, are creating new and complex challenges. At WithYou, we are calling for more regulated residential facilities and stronger medical support for young people who need specialist care.
Our statement
WithYou were invited to provide expert comment. Grace Willsher, Regional Head of Young Person Service Delivery at WithYou, says:
“For those young people more in crisis, we need that detox pathway. The safest way to go through it is in an in-patient facility - in terms of the risks involved trying to come off a substance, it’s safer to do that with the right medical professionals around, in a facility.
“But the journey someone has to go through to be in that place, to be ready for detox is huge and a young person will not come to that decision lightly. Potentially, they’re leaving friends behind to go to a place that may feel quite clinical, quite scary.
“We know there’s a lot of young people experiencing drug dependency and we put a lot of work into making sure the right professionals are involved and making sure we have a multi-agency approach to supporting them into detox. But there are limited places for under-18s, it’s not a quick fix and it takes time trying to find a bed for them, making sure that bed’s available and that young person’s ready and willing to go there.
I’d like to see a health and social care approach to substance use with young people, less of a criminal approach and more opening up conversation, making sure they feel safe enough to ask questions and get advice.
“I want to be able to continue the early intervention and prevention work we do, going into schools, training professionals and building links with medical professionals like GPs and urology departments. If I could wave a magic wand, it would be to bring about so many beds for the detox pathway, with the understanding that the journey a young person goes on to go into detox can be twisty and turny and may go off on a tangent.
“A lot of schools have a ‘just say no’ approach of zero tolerance, so if a young person was found to have cannabis on them, they would immediately be excluded rather than have someone sit down with them and try to understand what’s going on. Young people might not want to come forward in school to say they need help due to that fear of being permanently excluded.
