Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-09-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his assessment is of the adequacy of the availability of talking therapies to young people.
Nicola Blackwood
The Future in Mind report published in March 2015 which followed the work of the Taskforce into Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing recognised the lack of access to treatment for children and young people with mental health difficulties. This suggested that less than 25% – 35% of children and young people with a diagnosable mental health condition, based on epidemiological data from 2005, accessed support. In response to this, the Government committed to realising the vision set out in Future in Mind to deliver a major, system-wide transformation in children and young people’s mental health services. This aims to improve access to services and make evidence-based psychological therapies, also known as talking therapies, more widely available across the country for those children and young people who need them.
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. 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 children and young people are able to access high quality and evidence-based interventions wherever they 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. These Plans cover the full spectrum of mental health issues; from prevention and improving access to support and care for existing and emerging mental health problem to ensuring that inpatient services are available for those who need them.
