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One in five children now has a mental health problem and at least one in every 20 teenagers and 1 in every 50 primary school children are seriously depressed.

Reece is one of them. He is terrified his mother will die and is so frightened of her leaving him, she cannot even drop him off at school. It was when he tried to kill himself with a can opener that his parents realised, things had got out of hand.

Chris, Reece's father, told Channel 4 News: "It got to the point where we just needed help. We couldn't cope on our own."

His mother, Carol, added: "I think it would have got to the point where we would have given up coping and probably lost a lot. It cut me up inside. To think that your own son could feel like that.

"I think there are a lot of things going on in his head and he can just not understand them to even to start to tell us or to explain it to himself even."

Now helping Reece are three family support workers, a primary mental health worker and an educational psychologist. It may sound an expensive package but the idea is to swoop on problems before they escalate out of control and become really expensive.

Children with emotional difficulties can often end up being excluded or on child protection registers as families struggle to cope. Two thirds of children in care are believed to have an identifiable mental health disorder.

As Jayne Nash, an educational psychologist, working on the scheme told the programme: "It saves money in the end for the health service, education service and social services."

However Leicestershire's early intervention scheme is only a pilot project and a shortage of Government funding in children's mental health services threatens the future of such projects.

For the parents of ten-year-old Stuart, who 18 months ago became withdrawn, aggressive and refused to go to school, the scheme has been a lifeline that did not come soon enough. And his mum and dad had to plead for help and sat on an endless waiting list for a psychiatrist before being referred to the behaviour team.

Brian, his father, said: "He's ten now. In a couple of years time what's he going to be like unless he gets some help now. We're getting the help now that we should have had a year ago."

For more on this story see the Channel 4 News website