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Channel 4 News last night screened the second of a two-part report into the work of a specialist psychiatric unit that helps children - often those in care - with mental health problems.

Victoria Macdonald's Trouble Minds report looked at how early intervention is crucial in helping youngsters - some as young as three - overcome problems such as depression.

It focused on children receiving help from innovative child behaviour schemes in Leicester.

One of the youngsters, eight-year-old Reece started receiving help when he became so badly depressed that he was suicidal.

The experts all agree that if you catch a problem at three, it can take just a few weeks to address. For a child of eight, it could take several months and by 10 or 11, it can take five years of treatment.

For 15-year-old Nicola, who was abused at four years of age, and whose subsequent mental health problems were neglected for years, the help may have come too late.

At 10, she went into foster care but three years later, after she started to hear voices and threatened to commit suicide, she was admitted to Oakham House in Leicester, one of the few residential child psychiatric units in the country.

However, her mental health got so bad that even Oakham House could not manage her violent behaviour and she ended up in a secure unit for more than a year.

Nicola, who featured in last night's report, is now in a children's home, and making progress - with the help of medication three times a day. But she still gets angry and feels out of control and can end up slashing her arms.

Leicestershire's Child Behaviour Team is hoping to prevent more children ending up like Nicola by tackling the emotional and behavioural problems in children early.

The teams are made up of experts from social services, education and health who aim to work together in addressing the child and family's needs.

Rob Wakefield, one of the members of the team told the programme: "Families that we work with are almost definitely families that previously wouldn't have received a service."

The county and city teams are now seeing up to 800 children a year and act as a filtering service by determining if the child needs psychiatric help or, as is more often the case, it is the parents who need help in the way they handle their children.

"In our experience, almost always the problem is not the child. It isn't organic, it is much more about the history or the way they are currently being handled," said Rob.

It is hoped that the Leicestershire scheme will reverse the rocketing number of children with behavioural problems. Figures in the county show that there are now 2,000 referrals to child psychiatrists a year - a five-fold increase since the 1980s.

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