Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to (a) increase access to and (b) improve the delivery of mental health services in Easington constituency.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone who has a mental health need is able to access timely and effective treatment based on their clinical need. The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to testing and rolling out comprehensive waiting time standards for adults and children over the next decade. This builds on the already established waiting time standards for children and young people’s eating disorder services, early intervention for psychosis and adult Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services. These standards are all being met or on track for delivery by 2020/21 in line with previous commitments. Investment in mental health care is higher than ever before, this increased investment is intended to support improvements in every local area across the country.

In response to the commitments in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, the NHS Long Term Plan and the new Community Mental Health Framework for Adults and Older Adults, the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust Board have initiated the ‘Right Care, Right Place’ improvement programme that covers community, inpatient and urgent mental health care delivery for the population of Easington. This programme aims to deliver better experience and outcomes for services users and NHS staff by focussing on how the services of the Trust and their care-providing partners can work more seamlessly together.