FIGURES published for the first time show children are waiting more than five weeks for their first mental health appointment.

Children in Bolton are waiting an average of 5.22 weeks to see a health professional after they have been referred to the mental health services.

In neighbouring Bury they are waiting 6.05 weeks.

Health leaders and politicians in Greater Manchester are determined to shine a light on mental health and wellbeing and have allocated £80 million to do so.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said: “The mental health of our young people is one of the most urgent health challenges we face.”

Until recently no one in England was gathering data on child waiting times, two years ago as a result of devolution health bodies started collecting waiting times for each borough of Greater Manchester.

Mr Burnham said: “I’m proud that Greater Manchester is the first area of the country to publish its waiting times for children and young people’s mental health.”

Stockport has the longest waiting time with 8.8 weeks and Rochdale the shortest with 4.15 weeks.

Greater Manchester is the first area in the country to start collating and publishing publicly waiting times data for children and young people’s mental health services.

Best practice from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence says for best practice first assessments for a child’s mental health should be made within four to six weeks of a referral and a second appointment with specialist treatment within a further six to eight weeks.

In Greater Manchester leaders want children to have their first and second appointments within a school term, with the first appointment for assessment and formulating a diagnosis no more than four weeks from referral.

The health partnership in Manchester wants to standardise waiting times across the region and learn from boroughs where waiting times are better and good initiatives have been put in place.

Health bosses have acknowledged the biggest barrier to achieving their goals is having the right staff and enough of them.

Dr Sandeep Ranote, a consultant psychiatrist with the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, said: “The biggest challenge is workforce and having a trained and accredited workforce.”

The Manchester health partnership wants to get at least 150 more clinicians for children and young people by 2021.

The money allocated to improving children’s mental health and that of new mothers (£80m) has come from £136 million pot allocated from part of Greater Manchester’s devolved healthcare budget (£6bn).

NHS figures show 50 per cent of mental health problems are established by the age of 14, 74 per cent by 24. Work by mental health charity The King’s Fund in 2015 showed NHS spent 11 per cent of its budget on mental health care, despite mental health needs making up 23 per cent of the burden on the NHS.

Of that 11 per cent, around 6 per cent is spent on children’s mental health. Manchester is proposing to spend 60 per cent of its mental health budget on children’s mental health.

Mr Burnham said: “For too long, mental health has been the poor relation in the NHS, and as we know, the effects of poor mental health can have a life-long impact. We’re keen to make sure that every child here in Greater Manchester gets the best start in life. We’re spending more than the national average on mental health and investing in prevention to help stop problems developing.”