Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he his taking to increase the number of mental health specialists working in early years settings.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
It is for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to decide on how local mental health provision should be made, based on local need and circumstances. CCGs are required to work with other local services to produce local transformation plans (LTPs), now included in sustainability and transformation plans, which set out how children and young people’s mental health services will be delivered locally, including in early years.
We are making available an additional £1.4 billion to support them in this. NHS England’s report, ‘Children and young people’s mental health Local Transformation Plans – a summary of key themes’, estimated that almost 90% of LTPs referenced having early years programmes in place. The report is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/mentalhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2016/08/cyp-mh-ltp.pdf
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the effect of socioeconomic inequalities on children's health outcomes throughout their lifetimes.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Inequalities experienced in childhood can lead to continuing problems across the life course. We want children to have the best start in life. Health visitors, as leaders of the Healthy Child Programme for 0-5 year olds, provide evidence-based public health interventions at community, family and individual levels.
Local commissioners are critical in providing quality services that address public health priorities associated with deprivation. These include services to tackle smoking in pregnancy, reduce childhood obesity, improve oral health and enhance early language skills.
Public Health England is working closely with the Department for Education to help parents improve their children’s early language and literacy skills before they start school. This aims to close the `word gap’ between disadvantaged children and their peers. An £8.5 million programme has opened for local authorities to fund projects aimed at disadvantaged children.
We are making an additional £1.4 billion available to transform children and young people’s mental health services from 2015/16 to 2019/20. This will mean that by 2020/21, 70,000 additional children and young people each year will be accessing National Health Service specialist mental health services. We are clear that there is still more to be done, hence why we have recently published a joint health and education Green Paper, one of the key proposals for which is to create new mental health support teams to deliver interventions for mild to moderate mental health needs for children and young people, in or close to schools and colleges.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to ensure that local authorities that commission public health services appoint resident representatives to their commissioning (a) board and (b) working groups to help determine the appropriateness of local initiatives.
Answered by Steve Brine
Upper tier and unitary local authorities (LAs) in England have a duty to take the steps they believe are appropriate to improve the health of their local populations. LAs are directly accountable to their electorates for the way in which they discharge their duty and generally should decide for themselves how best to involve local residents in informing public health commissioning decisions.
However, LAs with health improvement duties must establish Health and Wellbeing Boards that bring together representatives from the local National Health Service, public health, social care and beyond to agree joint strategic needs assessments for the area. Each of these LAs also has a corresponding Local Healthwatch, organisations that aim to give citizens a strong voice in influencing and challenging how health and social care services are provided within their locality. All Health and Wellbeing Boards must include a Local Healthwatch member.
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will commission within this Parliament research into the effect on children's mental health of living with (a) income poverty, (b) debt, (c) poor housing and (d) in circumstances in which one or more adults have mental health problems.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department has commissioned NHS Digital to undertake a Children and Young People’s Mental Health Survey to examine the prevalence of mental disorders. The survey report is expected to be published in autumn 2018.
The report is planned to include estimates of prevalence of mental health conditions in relation to parents’ household income and the Index of Multiple Deprivation.
The Index of Multiple Deprivation combines information from seven domains to produce an overall relative measure of deprivation. The domains are:
- Income Deprivation;
- Employment Deprivation;
- Education, Skills and Training Deprivation;
- Health Deprivation and Disability;
- Crime;
- Barriers to Housing and Services; and
- Living Environment Deprivation.
The report is also planned to include information on children and young people’s mental health prevalence in relation to parental scores on the General Health Questionnaire 12 (GHQ-12), which is designed to screen for general mental health conditions (non-psychotic psychiatric morbidity).
Asked by: Tracy Brabin (Labour (Co-op) - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on under 5-year-olds who cause injury to themselves due to mental ill health.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The information requested is not collected centrally.