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.

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