Health and Social Care Committee and Education Committee

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

Officials in the Department of Health and Social Care told us that they expect that there will be some unintended consequences in seeking to achieve the four-week waiting time target if there are not adequate resources to make sure that the staff are in place to meet these young people’s needs. We know from the evidence we heard that right across the country there are already massive waiting times. In my own area, for example, 460 young people are waiting 24 weeks just for an assessment, let alone treatment. Unless we know that there will be more counsellors, psychiatrists and psycho- therapists to support these young people, there is no way that the Government will be able to introduce a four-week waiting time standard without raising thresholds for young people to access those services. That is a key recommendation of our report that we want the Government to address.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, thank my hon. Friend for her statement and the work of the Committees in producing this really important report. Paragraph 81 goes to the heart of the matter:

“The Government should consider in its plans whether the role being delivered by qualified professionals rather than teachers should be its first course of action rather than the contingency plan.”

Does she agree that, owing to the scale, seriousness and severity of mental health challenges in young people, the Government should build a service based around school but available out of school and staffed by mental health professionals?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. A key concern we heard from education professionals in written evidence was how those designated mental health leads will be able to do their job. It was not clear from the evidence we heard from the Minister for School Standards that adequate resources will be in place to equip those teachers with the skills they need to do that role. That is why we recommend that there should be a specific payment and that it should be a senior role. That is also why we recommend that mental health professionals should not be a contingency; the first port of call should be those professionals in mental health, who have a fuller and wider training to be able to fulfil that role, rather than relying on teachers, who already have a massive burden.