Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children and young people and adults were referred to specialist secondary mental health services with a primary reason of referral of eating disorders in (a) 2019-20, (b) 2020-21 and (c) 2021-22 to date; and what proportion of those referrals were made to an eating disorder service.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
Information is not held on the number of children and young people and adults referred to specialist secondary mental health services with a primary reason of referral of eating disorders. However, the number of referrals of children and young people, and adults referred to specialist secondary mental health services with a primary reason of referral for eating disorders is shown in the table below.
Not all referrals of children and young people, and adults to specialist secondary mental health services with a primary reason of referral for eating disorders are recorded as being made to eating disorder services. Some of these referrals are recorded as being made to other service team types, such as community mental health teams, psychiatric liaison services and single point of access services.
| Number of referrals of children and young people, and adults to specialist secondary mental health services with a primary reason of referral for eating disorders1 | Referrals with a primary reason of referral for eating disorders referred to eating disorder services2,3 | Proportion of referrals with a primary reason of referral for eating disorders referred to eating disorder services (%) |
Children and young people (aged 0 to 18) |
| ||
2019/20 | 14,455 | 9,514 | 66 |
2020/21 | 22,449 | 15,624 | 70 |
2021/22 (to July 2021) | 10,880 | 7,726 | 71 |
Adults (over 18) |
| ||
2019/20 | 20,490 | 15,576 | 76 |
2020/21 | 24,934 | 19,488 | 78 |
2021/22 (to July 2021) | 11,621 | 9,225 | 79 |
Source: Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS), NHS Digital
1 Some people may have been referred more than once during a particular time period
2 Includes eating disorders/dietetics services, community eating disorder services for children and young people and community eating disorder services
3 Some referrals may have been referred to multiple service team types
Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Autumn Spending Review 2021, what steps his Department is taking to measure how effective (a) education recovery and (b) other funding streams are in improving the mental and physical wellbeing of disabled children and parent carers.
Answered by Will Quince
As highlighted in the Disabled Children’s Partnership ‘Then There Was Silence’ report earlier this year, children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Through the autumn Spending Review 2021, schools will receive an additional £4.7 billion in core funding in the 2024/25 financial year, including £1.6 billion for schools and high needs in 2022/23 on top of already planned increases from the 2019 Spending Review. This is equivalent to a total cash increase of £1,500 per pupil between 2019/20 and 2024/25; taking the total core schools budget to £56.8 billion in 2024/25.
This core funding sits alongside a further £1.8 billion dedicated to supporting young people to catch up on missed learning, following on from the existing investment in catch up for early years, schools and colleges, including for tutoring and teacher training opportunities. This includes a one-off £1 billion recovery premium for the next two academic years - 2022/23 and 2023/24 - to support disadvantaged pupils in all state-funded primary and secondary schools.
Outside of the Spending Review, specifically on mental health and wellbeing, the government announced on 5 March 2021 that as part of the £500 million for mental health recovery, £79 million will be used to significantly expand mental health services for children, including disabled children. £31 million will also be used to address particular challenges faced by individuals with a learning disability and autistic people, including £3 million for community respite services. For the 2021/22 academic year, the department is also providing more than £17 million to build on existing mental health support available in schools and colleges. This includes £9.5 million to enable up to a third of schools and colleges to train a senior mental health lead, as part of our commitment to fund training for leads in all schools and colleges by 2025, and £7 million into our Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme, enabling local authorities to continue supporting schools and colleges to meet ongoing mental wellbeing.
The government also announced on 6 September 2021 an additional £5.4 billion for the NHS to support the COVID-19 response over the next six months, bringing the total government support for health services in response to COVID-19 to over £34 billion this year. This includes £2 billion to tackle the elective backlog, reducing waiting times for patients, including disabled children. We are providing over £42 million in 2021/22 to continue funding projects to support children with SEND including £27.3 million to the Family Fund in 2021/22 to support over 60,000 families on low incomes raising children and young people with disabilities or serious illnesses.
Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021, how much and what proportion of the £44 billion increased spending on the health service in England will be allocated to eating disorder services.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
National Health Service funding allocations, including provision for different service areas and regions in England, will be announced in due course.
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Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 17 June 2021 to Question 10548 on NHS: Staff, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that eating disorder services can recruit and retain the staff needed to meet rising demand for those services.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
We are investing approximately £1 billion to improve care for adults with a range of severe mental health problems, including eating disorders, in England by 2023/24. The majority of this funding is to be spent on staffing and contracting the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, with an ambition to recruit 10,000 new staff in community mental health services, including eating disorder services
The NHS People Plan seeks to improve staff retention, through areas such as flexible working, health and wellbeing and equality, diversity and inclusion. In addition, the NHS Retention Programme supports staff to stay whilst keeping them well to ensure we can retain staff, including those working in eating disorder services.
Asked by: Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when NHS England plans to ask NHS (a) trust chief executives, (b) chief operating officers and (c) HR directors to report details of potential staffing shortages in mental health care, in line with the recent similar request from NHS England to acute medical services.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
NHS England and NHS Improvement have no plans to do so. All mental health services providers are required to submit their plans, which also outlines measures to recruit and retain staff. In addition, all mental health providers take part in an annual workforce planning process, which captures vacancy rates.
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Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay Take this time to check in on your own mental wellbeing and of those you love. After the tragedies of the past two years it's important that we look out for one another. You can find mental health advice here: https://t.co/VXmrcAvNkf https://t.co/ObLzf764ss