Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jeremy Hunt and Nadine Dorries(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Dorries
That is a big question because it covers two areas. This Government have invested £2.3 billion in mental health services, a huge amount of which is to go into salaries, to deliver community health services where they are needed: close to patients and to their relatives and families. It is also to provide community health teams and support teams in schools for young people. Clinical commissioning groups are under an obligation to provide those mental health services with the set funding. If the hon. Lady would like to meet to hear more about that, I will be happy to discuss it with her.
Mr Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
As this is your last Health questions, Mr Speaker, may I thank you for your many years of campaigning for speech and language therapy for children? It has given great hope to many families in a situation similar to your own.
On the issue of early intervention, given that half of all mental health conditions are established before the age of 14, does the Minister, who is passionate about this, agree that mental health provision in schools is essential? Will she update the House on progress towards the 2023 objective of a quarter of schools having a mental health lead?
Ms Dorries
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for his work as Secretary of State. He was the longest-serving Secretary of State for Health ever, and he is passionately interested in this subject, too. Yes, we are on track—in fact, we are more than on track—to meet our objective of 25% of schools being covered by a school mental health support team by 2023-24.
The school mental health support teams have been launched in trailblazer areas, and I visited one a few weeks ago at Springwest Academy in Hounslow to see the amazing work the teams are doing with young children. The teams are teaching coping strategies and identifying mental health problems as they arise very early in life, which helps children to deal with those mental health problems now and into adulthood. We are on track and we hope to meet that objective.