Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Steve Brine

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make a statement on the Care Quality Commission’s review of children and young people’s mental health services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Steve Brine)]

Not enough scripture is quoted in this House, but I cannot match what was just said. However, I can tell the House that the Care Quality Commission published its “Are we listening? Review of Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services” report this morning, and, yes, we are listening. It was the second piece of work commissioned by the Prime Minister in January 2017 to look at this area of services, and the findings include examples of good or innovative practice and of dedicated people—we thank every one of them—working in every part of the system and a number of areas with strong practice ensuring that patients and families are involved in planning care, but there are also concerns around the join-up between children’s services. We thank the CQC and Dr Paul Lelliott for their work.

The Government have already committed to making available an additional £1.4 billion to improve children and young people’s mental health services to deliver on the commitments in “Future in mind” and NHS England’s five year forward view for mental health, and the CQC welcomes that progress in its report. I know that the hon. Lady and others have worries about this, but spend is reaching the front line. By 2020-21, we have committed to ensuring that 70,000 more children and young people each year will have access to high-quality NHS mental healthcare when they need it. However, there is so much more to do. Claire Murdoch, the national mental health director for NHS England, said in response to the report:

“CAMHS services are now improving, but from a starting point of historic underfunding and legacy understaffing, relative to rapidly growing need”

We see those things across the service.

In December, the Department of Health, jointly with the Department for Education, published “Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision”. That Green Paper responds to a number of the problems raised by the CQC in this report, and sets out a range of proposals to strengthen how schools and specialist NHS mental health services work together and to reduce the amount of time that children and young people have to wait to access specialist help. The proposals are backed by an additional £300 million of funding. We have carried out extensive face-to-face consultation on the Green Paper proposals and have received a high volume of responses to our online consultation, and we thank everyone for that. We will respond to this CQC review, alongside the Green Paper consultation, in the summer.

The report calls for the Secretary of State to use the inter-ministerial group on mental health to guarantee greater collaboration across Departments in prioritising mental health. We agree, and that recommendation is already in hand. The IMG has already contributed to the development of the Green Paper and will continue to provide leadership on the issues that the report raises. The CQC also recommends that everyone who works, volunteers or cares for children and young people is trained in mental health awareness. We are already rolling out mental health first aid training to every secondary school and have committed to rolling out mental health awareness training to all primary schools by 2022. The Government and Ministers remain wholly committed to making mental health everyone’s business and building good mental health for our children and young people.

[Barbara Keeley]

The report is the latest piece of recent evidence revealing systematic failures in our mental health services. It follows similar reports of the past few weeks that call into question the Government’s claims to have made mental health a priority equal to physical health. In this report, we see evidence of services actively putting up barriers to treatment, resulting in children and young people having to reach crisis point before being able to get access to the right treatment. Children are suffering because of those high eligibility thresholds. We know that 50% of mental health problems develop before the age of 14 and that 75% develop before the age of 18. Does the Minister recognise that imposing high eligibility thresholds means that children and young people are treated only when their condition becomes more serious? These high thresholds are even prompting GPs to tell children to pretend that their mental health is worse than it is. Will the Minister agree to look into referral criteria as a matter of urgency, so that children and young people get the proper treatment at the right time?

The report links these excessively high eligibility thresholds and reductions in access with funding reductions and not enough capacity for services to respond to local needs, so, whatever the Minister says, clearly not enough money is reaching the frontline. Can the Minister tell us how he plans to address that? The report, like the CQC’s recent report on rehabilitation services, raises concerns about out-of-area placements, which we know are a barrier to recovery. Will he tell the House what action is being taken to increase the number of in-patient beds available locally?

Finally, what will the Minister do to address the clear problems, highlighted in this report and others, associated with the rigid transition at age 18 from child and adolescent to adult mental health services, which is also a barrier to accessing care?

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Lady rightly raises the issue of spend reaching the frontline; I said in my opening remarks that it is doing so, and she asked what evidence there was of that. Last year, there was a 20% increase in clinical commissioning group spend on children and young people’s mental health, rising from £516 million in 2015-16 to £619 million in 2016-17.

On the broader issues raised in the hon. Lady’s response, I said that we have made up to £1.4 billion available over five years to support transformation of these services, and there is the additional £300 million that I mentioned. I want to touch on waiting times, referral routes and workforce. We are the first Government to introduce waiting time standards, and that is relevant to children and young people’s mental health, too. We are meeting, or on track to meet, both targets. We will pilot a four-week waiting time for specialist children and young people’s NHS mental health services, as was outlined in the recent Green Paper. As I say, we are considering responses to that.

On referral routes, our Green Paper proposes senior designated leads and mental health support teams—a new workforce—based on the findings of the Department for Education’s schools link pilot. They aim to improve the join-up with specialist services and to result in more appropriate referrals.

[Barbara Keeley]

indicated dissent.

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Lady shakes her head; I can only tell her the facts. Health Education England’s workforce plan recognises new ways of working as a cornerstone of delivering these improvements. HEE will also work with our partners to continue the expansion of these newly created roles in mental health services, and to consider the creation of new roles, such as that of early intervention workers, who would focus on child wellbeing as part of a psychiatrist-led team.

Adult Social Care Funding

Debate between Barbara Keeley and Steve Brine

Thursday 6th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Minister Steve Brine.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Steve Brine)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—take two.

There are few things more important to any of us than the way in which the oldest and most vulnerable are cared for in our society. First, let me pay tribute to the 1.4 million people who work in the country’s social care sector. They support many of the most vulnerable people in our communities, often in the most difficult of circumstances. I am proud that we have done more than any Government before to improve the quality of social care, introducing a tough system of CQC ratings, new qualifications for care workers, and new standards to ensure that everyone receives the highest-quality support. I am heartened that today’s CQC report shows that even in a time of acute fiscal pressure, 79% of adult social care services are now providing good or outstanding care.

However, it is impossible to ignore the pressure that our ageing population and advances in medicine are putting on the system. We have seen the number of over-65s increase by nearly 1.2 million, or about 14%, over the past five years. Today’s CQC report shows that in some areas, it is completely unacceptable that standards in some settings are below those rightly expected by care users and their families. This Government view social care as a priority, which is why in the spring Budget this year we announced an additional £2 billion over the next three years for councils in England to spend on adult social care services. That means that, in total, councils will have access to £9.25 billion more dedicated funding for social care over the next three years—enough to increase social care spending in real terms. We have also been clear that later this year we will be consulting widely on the future of social care in this country to put it on a stable footing.

My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary updated the House on Monday about action he is taking to address delayed discharges from hospital in advance of this winter. Last year there were 2.25 million delayed discharges, up by 24.5% from 1.81 million in the previous year. The Government are clear that no one should stay in a hospital bed longer than necessary—it removes people’s dignity, reduces their quality of life, leads to poorer health and care outcomes for people and is more expensive, ultimately, for the taxpayer. Since February, there have been significant improvements in the health and care system, with a record decrease in month-on-month delayed discharges in April of this year.

However, we must make much faster and more significant progress well in advance of next winter to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients and reduce pressures on accident and emergency departments. That is why we have introduced a further package of measures to support the NHS and local government in reducing delays. That package includes guidance, a performance dashboard, plans for local government and the NHS to deliver an equal share of the expectation to free up 2,500 hospital beds, and of course CQC reviews. We have also been clear that we will consider a review in November of the 2018-19 allocations of the social care funding provided at spring Budget 2017 for poorly performing areas. We have been clear that the Budget funding will all remain with local government, to be used for adult social care.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank the Minister for that response, but I really must ask him whether he shares my deep concern about the state of adult social care, as highlighted by today’s report by the Care Quality Commission. Some 3,200 care services were rated as “requires improvement”, with more than 340 rated as “inadequate”. That means that some 92,000 vulnerable people are receiving poor care and some 10,000 people are receiving inadequate care. The picture is even worse in nursing homes, with one in three receiving the poorest ratings.

Does the Minister share my concern about safety, with one in four care locations failing on protecting people from abuse or avoidable harm? That means thousands of vulnerable people not getting prescribed medicines, being ignored when they ask for help and not having enough time for their home care visits.

The Labour party has repeatedly raised the damaging impacts of budget cuts, with more than £5 billion having been cut from social care since 2010. Does the Minister now accept that that has caused the crisis in care staffing, which is at the heart of the poor care that is being reported? Poor staffing levels and staff training are key factors in those providers with the poorest ratings.

In his written ministerial statement earlier this week, the Secretary of State suggested that the £2 billion allocated in the spring Budget to local councils for social care, to which the Minister has just referred, will now be dependent on performance against targets for delayed transfer of care. That means that some councils could lose funding that they have already planned to spend. Does the Minister accept that threatening local councils with the loss of planned funding could lead to a worsening of the quality and safety issues highlighted today? With social care in crisis, this is not the time to be threatening joint working with local councils, so will he reverse that threat and match the Labour pledge of an extra £8 billion for social care, including an extra £1 billion this year?

[Steve Brine]

I thank the hon. Lady for that response. This subject was much discussed during the general election, and I think it will be greatly discussed during this Parliament.

Nobody is making any threats. The Government are very supportive of the best-performing systems, where local government and the NHS work together to tackle the challenge of delayed transfers of care. We have said that, depending on performance, we will consider a review in November of the 2018-19 allocations of social care funding provided in the spring Budget for areas that are poorly performing. As I have said, that funding will all remain with local government, to be used for social care.

Obviously, we recognise that there are real pressures in the system. That was why we responded—I think the hon. Lady’s party was pleased with this at the time—with an additional £2 billion for social care in this year’s Budget. We have also given councils the chance to raise the council tax precept. My authority, Hampshire, has done that, and I think that has been well received.

Turning to the actual report, it would be easy to duck all of this. Dare I say that I hope we can conduct this debate in a sensible spirit? People out there working in the system who want to pass the mum test, as was said this morning, want us to do that and are watching things closely. Of course, it would be easy to bury our heads in the sand, but let us remember that had we had the rigorous inspection regime that the Secretary of State put in place earlier, a lot of problems, including those in the hospital sector when the hon. Lady’s party was in government, would not have been heard of. We know about the current situation only because of the inspection regime that has been put in place.

The CQC report found a number of things, and obviously we will digest it over the days and weeks ahead. It found that the adult social care sector performed best in how caring its services are: 92% of services were rated good and 3% outstanding. We can kick this issue around all we like, but today’s report shows exactly why we introduced the inspection regime. It is uncovering the care that is good—the vast majority of it—and it is also uncovering the care that is not, which is where we want to help and support local authorities to make sure that improvements are made for the people we represent.