Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce the incidence of self-harm amongst children and young people.

Self-harm is a symptom of serious emotional distress which must be acted upon to ensure children and young people get the help they need.

This Government is committed to making children and young people’s mental health a high priority. The Children and Young People's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme is being expanded to cover additional areas of clinical practice, and extended so that by 2018 children and young people across England will have access. This will involve additional clinical staff being trained in the most effective evidence based treatment for self-harm, depression and anxiety.

The Department funds the multicentre study of self-harm, which provides monitoring data on self-harm including children and young people, and underpins knowledge about self-harm in England. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on the short term and longer term management of self-harm cite many outputs from the study.