Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the provision of mental health services for children and young people.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. This will allow an extra two million people by 2023/24, including 345,000 more children and young people, to access National Health Service funded mental health support.

We also provided an additional £79 million in response to the pandemic to expand children’s mental health services in the 2021/22 financial year. This allowed around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services, 2,000 more to access eating disorder services and a faster increase in the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.

There are currently 287 mental health support teams, covering 26% of pupils, in place in around 4,700 schools and colleges across the country, offering support to children experiencing anxiety, depression and other common mental health issue. Over 500 support teams are planned to be up and running by 2024.

NHS England has also consulted on the potential to introduce five new waiting time standards as part of its clinically-led review of NHS access standards. One of these is that children, young people and their families/carers presenting to community-based mental health services, should start to receive care within four weeks from referral. We are now working with NHS England on the next steps.

As a first step to introduce the five new waiting time standards, NHS England has recently shared and promoted guidance with its local system partners to consistently report waiting times to support the development of a baseline position.