Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to allocate funding to local authorities to support (a) the mental health of child refugees and (b) those child refugees diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Government has committed £129 million to assist with local authority costs over years two-five of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement scheme. This is allocated on a tariff basis over four years, tapering from £5,000 in year two to £3,700 in year three, to £2,300 in year four and £1,000 in year five. This is in addition to the first 12 months of a refugee's resettlement costs, which are funded by central government using the Official Development Assistance budget.

The grant to local authorities is not ring fenced, and can be used for example towards support for costs such as counselling, social care and other needs. Funding payments (per individual refugee) can be pooled and managed across all the refugees a local authority takes in.

For unaccompanied asylum seeking children, local authorities receive a daily rate towards the costs of care.

Refugees and unaccompanied asylum seeking children also have access to health and education services, which are funded through the normal per capita funding routes. The Government is investing £1.4 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament to drive improvement and support significant transformation in children and young people’s mental health so that there is easy access to the right support from the right service when it is needed.

Specifically, this includes £1.4 million in 2016/17 followed by £2.8 million annually, for the following three years, targeted at improved mental health support for the most vulnerable looked-after children and young people, those who are looked-after in secure children’s homes.

We have also established an independent Expert Working Group to develop care pathways to support an integrated approach to meeting the needs of looked-after children with mental health difficulties. In November 2016 we announced that we will be piloting, from spring, how mental health can be better assessed as part of the health assessment for looked-after children entering care.