Chris Quinn NICCY interview — NI Children's Commissioner on JustMentalTalk discussing A System at a Crossroads
08/13/2026

Chris Quinn NICCY Interview: NI’s Commissioner Speaks Out on a System “At a Crossroads”

JUSTMENTAL  |  INTERVIEW

In this Chris Quinn NICCY interview, Northern Ireland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People speaks candidly about a mental health system he describes as being at a crossroads, and about what young people across Northern Ireland are actually living through right now.

Chris Quinn has spent his entire career in youth work rather than in policy or law. Before becoming the fourth Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY) in September 2023, he started out at the Star Neighbourhood Centre and the Bytes Project in North Belfast, became Belfast City Council’s first Children and Young People’s Coordinator, and spent fifteen years running the NI Youth Forum. That background shapes almost everything he says in this conversation: less policy language, more plain description of what’s actually breaking.

Watch the Chris Quinn NICCY interview: a system “at a crossroads”

The starting point for this Chris Quinn NICCY interview is NICCY’s own report, published in February 2026: A System at a Crossroads, an assessment of how children’s mental health services are designed and delivered in Northern Ireland, measured against a child’s-rights approach. It follows directly on from NICCY’s 2018 ‘Still Waiting’ report, and the title is deliberate, Quinn is blunt that the system is at a genuine decision point, not simply under pressure as usual.

Much of that pressure is visible in the CAMHS waiting-time data. As JustMental has reported previously, Northern Ireland’s most recent published CAMHS waiting-time figures cover the position at 31 March 2025, are themselves incomplete, and have not been updated since the Encompass patient-record system went live in May 2025, pending quality assurance, while other NHS-equivalent waiting-time data has continued to be published in the same window. Quinn’s assessment is direct: an inability to measure how long children are waiting is not a technical footnote, it’s an accountability gap with real consequences for real children.

Poverty, education and the long road to good mental health

The conversation moves beyond CAMHS into the conditions that shape a child’s mental health long before they ever reach a waiting list. Quinn has previously described child poverty in Northern Ireland, currently affecting around a quarter of all children, as a political choice rather than an inevitability, and in this interview he traces the line between poverty, education and long-term mental health outcomes directly. This part of the Chris Quinn NICCY interview is where the discussion turns concrete: early intervention, in his view, is the single biggest lever available, not as an abstract principle, but as something that has to exist at a specific age, in a specific setting, before problems compound.

That’s also where the loss of Northern Ireland’s Healthy Happy Minds primary-school counselling pilot comes up. Stood down in 2023 with no replacement service put in its place, it’s raised in this Chris Quinn NICCY interview as a clear example of what happens when early support disappears rather than gets reinforced.

Children’s rights, and the grassroots work that fills the gaps

Quinn also speaks about NICCY’s own commitment to incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into domestic law, and about the grassroots youth work, the kind done by organisations like YeHa in North Belfast and AYE in Ardoyne, that often reaches young people the statutory system doesn’t.

This is the latest in JustMentalTalk’s ongoing coverage of children’s mental health in Northern Ireland, alongside JustMental’s own 107 a Day campaign for 24/7 mental health crisis response teams across all five Health and Social Care Trust areas. Where NICCY’s report sets out the systemic picture, campaigns like 107 a Day are pushing for the specific, measurable changes Quinn describes as necessary, proof that conversations like this one are meant to build pressure for change, not simply document the problem.

Watch the full Chris Quinn NICCY interview on JustMentalTalk to hear the conversation in full, including what Quinn believes “good” would actually look like for children’s mental health in Northern Ireland, and what he’d want a parent currently on a waiting list to take from it.

If you or a young person you know is struggling

Support is available, day and night.

  • Lifeline (NI crisis helpline): 0808 808 8000 — free, 24/7
  • Childline (for under-19s): 0800 1111 — free, confidential, 24/7
  • Samaritans: 116 123 — free, 24/7
  • SHOUT: text 85258 — free, 24/7 text support

If a child or young person is in immediate danger, contact 999.

Reported in line with Samaritans media guidelines. JustMental:  justmental.net | info@justmental.net