Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to (a) increase and (b) tailor the provision of mental health services for children in response to increasing demand for those services following the covid-19 outbreak.

We are investing at least an additional £2.3 billion a year to expand mental health services by 2023/24 to enable an extra 345,000 more children and young people to access National Health Service-funded mental health support.

In March 2021, we announced an additional £79 million for children’s mental health services in 2021/22 to allow approximately 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services, 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services and accelerate the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges. NHS England and NHS Improvement are also investing a further £40 million in 2021/22 to address the impact of COVID-19 on children and young people’s mental health.