Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department plans to invest in early intervention services for young people with mental health conditions in each of the next five years.

Edward Timpson

Children and young people’s mental health is a priority for this Government, supported by an additional £1.4 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament. Each clinical commissioning group has worked with partners, including schools and colleges, to develop a Local Transformation Plan setting out how they will provide support for the full spectrum of mental health conditions, including early intervention measures.

Schools and colleges have an important role to play in supporting the mental health of children and young people, and we will continue to invest in this. We have provided them with a range of information, support, advice and guidance to help them develop ‘whole-school’ approaches to best suit the needs of their pupils. This includes guidance on: teaching about such issues as depression and anxiety within their personal, social, health and economic education curriculum, and providing effective school-based counselling. Teachers can also access free online support for pupils with a range of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, through the MindEd website.

We want to support schools and colleges further, and to help us to know where to best direct this support we are currently conducting a large-scale survey asking them what approaches they use, as well as what they find to be the most effective. The results should be available next spring.

The Department of Health has also commissioned a new prevalence survey that should provide updated information on a range of specific mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. This is due to report in 2018.