Children: Mental Health Services

(asked on 30th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to reduce anxiety in children; and what discussions he has had with (a) the NSPCC and other children's charities on that matter.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 8th December 2020

The Department for Education works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and its agencies, including Public Health England (PHE), on action to promote good mental health and wellbeing. On 8 September, PHE launched a mental wellbeing campaign for children and young people. It expands PHE’s Better Health-Every Mind Matters website with content specifically for children and young people and their parents and carers.

We know that the COVID-19 outbreak is having a particular impact on children and young people’s wellbeing and mental health. DHSC have published a mental health and wellbeing support plan, setting out a wide range of actions that the government is supporting across the NHS and wider services to support mental health and wellbeing recovery, including for children and young people. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/staying-mentally-well-winter-plan-2020-to-2021/staying-mentally-well-this-winter.

The plan highlights the importance of the action that we have taken to ensure that pupils are able to return to school. It also sets out a range of actions that have been taken by the department to support schools, and specific groups of children and young people. This includes the £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme, providing schools and colleges with the knowledge and access to resources to support children and young people, teachers and parents.

The department engages regularly with key children’s charities and has valued the insight and challenge from charities in shaping our response to supporting children through the COVID-19 outbreak. Our focus has been to ensure that, together, we support as many children as possible. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak we have met monthly with the NSPCC, and several other key children’s charities, to understand key issues facing the system, the challenges facing vulnerable young people, and to ensure a coherent response to providing support.

Additionally, to inform our work to support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, my hon. Friend, the Minister of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health, and I held a roundtable in July, attended by stakeholders from NHS mental health services, local government, and the voluntary and community sector, including Childline. This was conducted to explore ways of mitigating the mental health impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on children and young people and strengthen partnership working between schools, mental health services, and local organisations.

To increase support further in the long term, we remain committed to our joint green paper delivery programme with DHSC and NHS England, including introducing new mental health support teams linked to schools and colleges, providing training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges, and testing approaches to faster access to NHS specialist support.

Reticulating Splines