Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of children being treated in A&E for a mental health crisis since 2010.

The Department and NHS England recognise that there is a need to improve the service responses for children and young people who attend emergency departments with mental health needs.

We are making an additional £1.4 billion available in order to transform services, with the ambition for an additional 70,000 children and young people to access National Health Service specialist services a year by 2020/21.

‘Refreshing NHS Plans for 2018/19’, published by NHS England and NHS Improvement, requires the NHS to continue to work towards the ambition that, by 2020/21, all acute hospitals will have mental health liaison services in emergency departments that can meet the specific needs of people of all ages including children and young people.

The NHS is also developing new approaches to improve children and young people crisis help. Since 2016, £4.5 million has been invested in eight urgent and emergency vanguard sites that have been testing models of delivering urgent and emergency mental health care for children and young people.

In addition, through the mental health New Models of Care Programme; seven children and young people’s mental health sites are testing ways to improve the outcomes and experience of children, young people and their families by improving the join up between community and inpatient services.