Cass Review
Debate between Victoria Atkins and Jason McCartney(8 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Victoria Atkins
I am not clear whether the hon. Lady supports the report or is castigating it; I have no idea whether she supports it or not. We are trying to use the evidence in this very thorough and thoughtful review, in the words of her Front-Bench spokesman, to help clinicians treat our young people and children in a compassionate, caring way. I have noticed, and have had it reported to me by others who have been watching, that certain campaigners are trying to build up a head of steam to say that the report is somehow flawed. It is not. This is superb evidence, and the NHS has assured us that it will act on it.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
The Cass review highlights the deterioration of mental health in young people. It particularly highlights the impact of social media, which puts awful pressures on young people. The mental health crisis obviously affects both boys and girls, but as the Secretary of State highlighted earlier, it particularly affects girls and young women. Will she continue to turbocharge child and adolescent mental health services’ crisis teams, and give them the resources that they desperately need to support our young people?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We want to not just help with crisis support, but prevent our young people from getting into a position of crisis in the first place, so we are rolling out mental health support teams, ahead of our schedule, across schools. That is a really important piece of work that will help 44% of the student population, but we want to go even further. In the 12-month period ending in March 2021, we increased the number of children and young people aged under 18 who received NHS-funded mental health services to some 758,000. Of course, we want that support to be there in the community, but importantly we also want to help clinicians to understand that this is just one of several sets of conditions that they should have confidence to work on, in order to look after the child holistically.