Mental Health Services: Children

(asked on 21st January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made in improving access to specialist mental health support for children.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 29th January 2020

We have introduced two waiting times: for 95% of children (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases, and for 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis to receive treatment within two weeks of referral. We are on target to meet these aims.

Our Children and Young People’s Green Paper sets out how we plan are piloting a four-week waiting time to improve access to services and are introducing new Mental Health Support Teams. In December 2018, we announced Trailblazer sites to test our Green Paper proposals. Twelve of these sites will trial four-week waiting times.

We have also committed at least a further £2.3 billion a year to mental health services by 2023/24. The NHS Long Term Plan and Mental Health Support Teams will see at least an additional 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 will be able to access support by 2023/24.

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