Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that refugees and asylum seekers are able to access mental health services.

Alistair Burt

No estimate has been made of the proportion of refugees and asylum seekers who require mental health treatment as this data is not routinely collected.

Both refugees and asylum seekers are offered health assessments which include consideration of mental health issues, however we do not hold data on the outcome of these.

NHS England and clinical commissioning groups are committed to ensuring fair and equitable mental health care services for all, which includes all Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, including vulnerable migrants, in particular, refugees and those seeking asylum.

NHS England recently launched the Five Year Forward View Mental Health Task Force Report which clearly outlines action to be taken nationally, regionally, and locally to help improve mental health services for BME communities in England.

The full report is available via the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Mental-Health-Taskforce-FYFV-final.pdf

NHS England supported MIND to co-produce the Guidance for commissioners – ‘Commissioning mental health services for vulnerable adult migrants’ September 2015 launched February 2016. The Guidance aims to ensure National Health Service commissioners and providers provide timely and good quality mental health services for vulnerable migrants in particular refugees and those seeking asylum. The full report is available at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/gov/equality-hub/migrants/

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