Henry Smith – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Henry Smith on 2015-11-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve children and young people’s mental health services.

Alistair Burt

Children and young people’s mental health is a priority area for this Government. We are committed to delivering the vision set out in Future in mind through the launch of a major system-wide transformation programme working alongside our partners in Government and arm’s length bodies. This will improve access and make services more widely available across the country.

To support this transformation, an additional£1.4 billion funding has been made available over the course of this Parliament for spending on children and young people’s mental health, of which we are spending £173 million this year, including £30 million on eating disorders. This will be used to improve community-based services so that young people are helped earlier and are less likely to need to go into hospital. It will also enable the expansion and extension of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme so that a wider range of those who need it are able to access high quality and evidence-based interventions wherever they may live. All clinical commissioning groups have been asked to work with their partners to develop Local Transformation Plans to transform their local offer to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

A national programme of work will support local areas, including the extension and expansion of the use of evidence- based interventions, tackling stigma, improving data and information to inform greater transparency and accountability and developing a specialist and stronger workforce.