Philip Davies – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2015-11-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the (a) likely level of unmet mental health needs of looked-after children and (b) care outcomes of such children with such unmet needs.

Edward Timpson

The major study on this issue, ‘The mental health of young people looked after by local authorities in England’, conducted by the Office for National Statistics in 2002, found that 44% of children with a mental disorder were in contact with child mental health specialists, and a third had accessed special education services.

The Government recognises the need to improve the provision of mental health services for children, including looked-after children, care leavers and those who are adopted from care, because they face a higher risk of developing mental health difficulties. In line with the proposal in ‘Future in mind’, Clinical Commissioning Groups across all areas have submitted Local Transformation Plans for children’s and young people’s mental health and wellbeing to NHS England. These plans, which are currently being assured, should cover the whole spectrum of services for children and young people, including interventions for those with existing or emerging mental health problems.

A new mental health services dataset is being implemented which, from 2016, will begin to allow benchmarking of local services at national level. This will begin to provide better data on outcomes, the source of referral, waiting times and demographic information, including whether a child is looked after. This will enable further analysis of whether vulnerable children and young people are able to access services.