Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the June 2019 Children's Society report on mental health, what plans he has to narrow the gap between the number of children and adolescents who are referred for mental health treatment by their GP, schools and social services and the number of children and adolescents receiving mental health treatment.

The NHS Long Term Plan sets a goal of an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 years, receiving support via NHS-funded mental health services by 2023/24. The NHS has also committed to funding for children and young people’s mental health services growing as a proportion of all mental health funding for the first time, which will itself grow faster than funding for the NHS overall.

Our Green Paper, ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’ sets out how we plan to increase the availability of support for children and young people, by reaching them in schools or colleges through:

- incentivising every school or college to identify and train a senior mental health lead;

- creating new mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges; and

- piloting a four-week waiting time to ensure swifter access to specialist NHS mental health services for those who need it.