Norman Lamb – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-02-02.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve access to mental health services for care leavers aged 18 to 25 years old.
Alistair Burt
The Government is committed to making the full £1.4 billion investment available over the course of this Parliament to improve mental health services for children and young people.
In line with guidance published by NHS England, all clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have produced Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) for children and young people’s mental health and these have all now been assured and funding allocated for implementation. These plans required all key partners to agree locally how best to meet the mental health needs of children and young people in their local populations and should cover the whole spectrum of need, which includes improving access to mental health services for vulnerable groups such as children in care and care leavers so that they can receive high quality mental health care when they need it. It is for local partners to decide how much of the funding which will be allocated to CCGs to improve local services throughout the five years will be spent specifically on children in care and other vulnerable groups. However, this will be based on an assessment of local needs and set out in the LTPs.
The Government’s overall strategy to improve outcomes for care leavers is set out in the Care Leaver Strategy: A cross-departmental strategy for young people leaving care report (October 2013), and a one-year-on document, Care Leaver Strategy: One year on progress update, (October 2014) that reported on progress made and set out how the Government intends to further improve support for care leavers. The Government intends to publish its refreshed Care Leaver Strategy later this year.
The Local Government Association has produced a spreadsheet giving details of every LTP can be found using the following webpage address:
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