Children: Mental Health Assessments

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the remarks by Lord Nash on 23 November 2016 (HL Deb, col 1947), what progress they have made with testing new approaches to mental health assessments for looked-after children which were due to commence in April or May this year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the pilots were delayed by the general election but will start next year. Delay has enabled the design to effectively address the problems identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the Education Select Committee. In particular, we have taken forward recommendations of the expert working group on the mental health of children in care, which the Government commissioned to look at how to improve mental health and well-being support for looked-after children. We are currently identifying an organisation to support implementation.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer and will not dwell on my disappointment that it has taken so long to get the pilots off the ground. It will now be important to understand how these pilots will fit with the new trailblazers announced in the Green Paper to trial new mental health support teams working with schools. Does the Minister agree with me that it would make sense for at least one area to trial both the new children-in-care assessment pilots and the new mental health support teams to see how they best fit together?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we will work with our delivery partner to identify pilot sites, and there will be an up-front commitment to help meet any needs that are identified during the assessment process. One advantage of the delay is that we now have the mental health Green Paper, and we are trying to dovetail as much of the work from that into these pilots as we can.