Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve mental health provision for (a) babies, (b) toddlers, (c) children and (d) young people.

At the 2021 Autumn Budget the Government committed to improving support for families by announcing around £300 million to fund a new three-year Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. A significant proportion of this funding has been allocated to support perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships. We are committed to ensuring that parents and carers can access timely and seamless mental health and relationship support from a baby’s conception.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. This will allow an extra two million people by 2023/24, including 345,000 more children and young people, to access National Health Service funded mental health support.

We also provided an additional £79 million in response to the pandemic to expand children’s mental health services in the 2021/22 financial year. This allowed around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services, 2,000 more to access eating disorder services and a faster increase in the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.

There are currently 287 mental health support teams, covering 26% of pupils, in place in around 4,700 schools and colleges across the country, offering support to children experiencing anxiety, depression, and other common mental health issue. Over 500 support teams are planned to be up and running by 2024.