Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 15th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to proposals in the NHS Long Term Plan on expanding access to community-based mental health services, how many of the additional 345,000 children and young people expected to be accessing support via NHS funded mental health services and school or college-based Mental Health Support Teams are expected to be (a) 0-5, (b) 6-18 and, (c) 19-25 years old.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 21st January 2019

We expect that the majority of the 345,000 additional children and young people will access support via Mental Health Support Teams as these will provide brand new services, situated in schools and colleges and are intended to offer earlier help and intervention.

We anticipate that many of the 345,000 additional children and young people will be of statutory education age i.e. aged between 5-18. However, given that Mental Health Support Teams will operate in and around primary schools and further education colleges, some at the younger and older end are likely to be outside of this group.

The NHS Long Term Plan also highlights that the structure of mental health services often creates gaps for young people undergoing the transition from children and young people’s mental health services to appropriate support including adult mental health services. To address this, NHS England has committed to extend current service models to create a comprehensive offer for 0-25 year olds that reaches across mental health services for children, young people and adults.

The detailed implementation plan noted on page 10 of the Long Term Plan will contain more details on the roll-out of additional Children and Young People’s Mental Health services.

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