Asked by: Mark Fletcher (Conservative - Bolsover)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to take steps to ensure that his Department's Major Conditions Strategy will (a) adequately take into account the views and experiences of the 14,000 young people who responded to the Long-term Mental Health Strategy consultation and (b) achieve the ambitions set out in the Green Paper on Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision, Cm 9523, published in December 2017.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
We received over 5,000 submissions to our mental health and wellbeing call for evidence, and we appreciate the engagement work many stakeholders carried out with children, young people and adults with lived experience, and more broadly, to inform their responses to the call for evidence. We have analysed the responses to the call for evidence, and we will consider them as part of the process for developing the Major Conditions Strategy.
We remain committed to delivering the Green Paper on Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision and we have made progress.
Mental health support teams now cover 26% of pupils, a year earlier than originally planned.
NHS England piloted a four week waiting time standard and has consulted on the definition and introduction of a range of waiting time standards, including that children, young people and their families/carers presenting to community-based mental health services, should start to receive care within four weeks from referral.
The Department for Education has committed to offer all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, and over 10,000 schools and colleges have taken up the training offer so far.