Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the announcement in Budget 2018, what his Department's timescale is for implementing school-based mental health support teams; and by what date he plans for mental health support teams to be extended across the country.

Work on developing mental health support teams for schools forms part of the work to implement the proposals set out in the Green Paper, ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’. The first wave of recruitment for the Educational Mental Health Practitioners who will form part of these teams is now under way and 210 people will take their places on specialist training courses from January 2019. These trainees will start working in schools during 2019. The initial local areas, or trailblazer sites, that will trial the Green Paper proposals will be announced by the end of the year. As stated in the Green Paper, we plan to roll out the teams to between a fifth and a quarter of the country by 2022/23.