Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

Department of Health written question – answered at on 22 December 2017.

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Photo of Vicky Foxcroft Vicky Foxcroft Opposition Whip (Commons)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has for supporting the mental health needs of children and young people over the next 12 months.

Photo of Jackie Doyle-Price Jackie Doyle-Price The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health

Children and young people’s mental health is a top priority for this Government which is why we are making an additional £1.4 billion available from 2015/16 to 2019/20 to transform children and young people’s mental health services. This additional money provides funding for clinical commissioning groups and various national programmes, including improving crisis support, expanding the workforce and tackling stigma. The additional money will also be used to improve access to services, with the indicative trajectory for 2018/19 (as set out in NHS England’s implementation plan for their ‘Five Year Forward View for Mental Health’ being for an additional 49,000 additional children to access mental health treatment, rising to 70,000 by 2020/21. Bed numbers in the existing Mother and Baby units will increase so that overall capacity increased by 49% in 2018/19.

Our recent joint Department of Health and Department for Education Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, will be supported by over £300 million and aims to improve provision of services in schools, bolster links between schools and the National Health Service, and pilot a four week waiting time. The consultation period will end in March 2018 and we will subsequently analyse responses to inform implementation of the proposals.

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