Oral Answers to Questions

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking in the education system to support children and young people with mental health issues.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What assessment she has made of the effect of child and adolescent mental health services on the health, wellbeing and performance of young people in schools and colleges.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

11. What plans the Government has to improve mental health in schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I absolutely do recognise that the partnerships between health and education are vital in getting the right mental health support to children quickly. I welcome the initiatives that have been established in Macclesfield. We believe that the significant investment of £1.4 billion in children and young people’s mental health services that this Government have announced will make a real difference. I am delighted that there are so many questions on children’s mental health in this session today.

[Stella Creasy]

A parent of a young girl in Walthamstow suffering from an eating disorder recently wrote to me giving a harrowing account of the struggle to get support for her daughter. She suggested that one of the things that would make a difference would be for child and adolescent mental health services to have a presence directly in schools so that they could intervene earlier. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) pointed out, we know from the IFS that real-terms funding for schools is going to be cut for the first time since the 1990s. What can the Secretary of State say directly to my constituent to reassure her that every young person will have access to mental health services directly in their schools so that such situations can be avoided in future?

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree with the hon. Lady. We all, as constituency MPs, hear these heart-rending stories. I, too, have had parents in my constituency bring to my attention cases of eating disorders among young people. I mentioned the £1.4 billion that the Government have already introduced, a significant sum of which is being spent this year on supporting young people with eating disorders. We are also contributing £1.5 million to a pilot with NHS England to train single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services so that those services work well together to ensure that schools, which do not necessarily have mental health experts trained in that area, know exactly who to go to and how to get help for their pupils.