Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) steps his Department is taking and (b) funding is allocated to implement each proposal in the Children and Young People's Mental Health Task Force report, Future in Mind; and what progress has been made on implementing those proposals to date.

Future in Mind, published in 2015, brought stakeholders together behind a vision to improve children and young people’s mental health at a time when these services were much in need of attention and focus. The vision included significant ambitions around increasing access to children and young people’s mental health services. Following publication, the Government committed £1.4 billion for improvements to children and young people’s mental health services over the following five years.

Action is now underway to make a range of improvements to children and young people’s mental health services including increasing numbers accessing specialist services, new waiting time standards, setting up new support teams in or near schools, training staff to work in these, training teachers and piloting a waiting time for access to specialist services.

The Government committed providing access to specialist mental health services for an additional 70,000 children and young people a year by 2020/21.This is being delivered through implementation of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. This programme is at the half way point and available data suggests the Government is on track to deliver against this target.

The Five Year Forward View also introduced two waiting time standards for children and young people. The first aims for 95% of children and young people (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases by 2020/21. The second is that 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis should receive treatment within two weeks of referral by 2020/21. We are currently on track and meeting these waiting time standards respectively.

In relation to the development of a ‘whole system approach’, the Government is going further than the vision set out in Future in Mind. Our Green Paper, published jointly with the Department for Education, sets out our plans for increased support for children and young people in schools. As part of implementing this, we are setting up new Mental Health Support Teams to deliver mental health interventions for those with mild to moderate needs in, or close to, schools and colleges (and refer those with more severe needs on to specialist services). Educational Mental Health practitioners’ training places are now open for 210 new staff. Training will start from January 2019.

We will also ensure that at least one teacher in every primary and secondary school will receive mental health awareness training to enable school staff to spot common signs of mental health issues, and to help children and young people receive appropriate support.

We have also committed to piloting a four week waiting time for access to specialist children and young people’s mental health services.