Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 18 October 2018.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) steps his Department is taking and (b) funding his Department has allocated to implement the proposals contained in the report, Future in Mind, Promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, published by his Department and NHS England in 2015; what progress his Department has made on implementing those proposals; and if he will make a statement.
Since publication of Future in Mind the Government has committed to transform services and increase access to specialist mental health services for an additional 70,000 children and young people a year by 2020/21. This is being delivered through the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, which is at the half way point and available data suggests the Government is on track to deliver against this target.
The Five Year Forward View also introduced two waiting time standards for children and young people. The first aims 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. The second is that 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis receive treatment within two weeks of referral. We are currently exceeding or on track to meet these waiting time standards.
The Government made an additional £1.4 billion available over the course of 2015/16-2020/21 to support this transformation, of which £150 million was for improved eating disorders services.
‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’, published jointly with the Department for Education will cost £300 million and will provide increased support for children and young people. As part of this we are setting up new Mental Health Support Teams to deliver mental health interventions for those with mild to moderate needs in or close to schools and colleges (and refer those with more severe needs on to specialist services). Educational Mental Health practitioners’ training places are now open for 210 new staff. Training will start from January 2019.
We will ensure that at least one teacher in every primary and secondary school will receive mental health awareness training to enable school staff to spot common signs of mental health issues, and to help children and young people receive appropriate support. We have also committed to piloting a four week waiting time for access to specialist children and young people’s mental health services.
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