Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many children and young people have accessed NHS child and adolescent mental health services in England in each of the last five years.

The majority of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) services are commissioned locally by a number of commissioners, including clinical commissioning groups, schools and local authorities. Data on attendance at CAMHS is held locally, not nationally and we are therefore not able to provide the information requested.

A new CAMHS minimum dataset is in development that will provide data on outcomes, length of stay for in-patient care, the source of referral, location of appointment and demographic information. Our current estimate is that data will be collected nationally from spring 2016.

CAMHS Tier 4 is a specialised in-patient service commissioned by NHS England since April 2013.

Overall, there has been an increase in the number of NHS-funded CAMHS Tier 4 beds. The number has increased from 844 in 1999 to 1,128 in 2006 and from 1,343 April 2013 to 1,386 in April 2014.

In the summer, NHS England committed to open 50 additional new general CAMHS and intensive care beds, as of December, 40 have opened. The remaining 10 are planned to open before the end of the financial year.

Within the total number of beds commissioned, there are 109 Low Secure beds and 100 Medium Secure beds.

We are unable to provide information on Tier 4 bed numbers that predate the setting-up of NHS England.