Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there is adequate funding for support services for children and young people with eating disorders in the South West at (a) community services, (b) in-patient services and (c) psychiatry services.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s programmes of work for children and young people’s mental health, including eating disorders, are focussed on community mental health services and inpatient services.

The funding and provision of health services, including mental health services, are the responsibility of local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which have the flexibility to allocate funding according to local need. CCGs are required to meet the mental health investment standard (MHIS), which means increasing the spending on mental health by at least as much as their overall budget increases and therefore increase their spend on mental health. Latest data shows that 99% of CCGs are on track to meet the MHIS in 2020/21.

Under the NHS Long Term Plan, funding for children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall National Health Service funding and total mental health spending. This means that children and young people’s mental health services will for the first time grow as a proportion of all mental health services, which will themselves also be growing faster than the NHS overall.

We have also announced an extra £79 million in 2021/22 to significantly expand children’s mental health services, including allowing 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services.