Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect that all children and young people requiring specialist mental health treatment and care will be able to access such provision.

Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health sets out plans for expansion of National Health Service children and young people’s mental health services so that by 2020/21 at least an additional 70,000 children and young people a year will be receiving evidence-based treatment.

Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health also includes two waiting time standards for children and young people, that 95% of children (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and within four weeks for routine cases. A copy is attached.

Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision: a Green Paper was published in December 2017. This sets out measures to improve access by bringing mental health services into schools through a new workforce of Educational Mental Health practitioners.

The Green Paper also announced the piloting of a four-week waiting time to improve access to NHS mental health services, which we will roll out in a number of trailblazer areas alongside the support teams. The precise rollout will be determined by the success of the pilots trialling a four-week waiting time standard and the securing of funding in the next spending review. A copy of the Green Paper is attached.

Further plans for development of mental health services will be set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.