Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure adequate funding for Time for Young People in Torbay; and if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of early support provision.

We recognise the importance of high-quality, community-based early support for children and young people’s mental health, including innovative local services such as Time for Young People in Torbay. These services play a key role in offering early, accessible support to young people at a point when they may not meet clinical thresholds for statutory National Health Service mental health services. It is open to integrated care boards and local authorities to commission voluntary sector providers to ensure the mental health and wellbeing needs of their local population are met.

Whilst Government does not directly fund Time for Young People in Torbay, as part of the Department’s wider commitment to early intervention and prevention, we are working with NHS England to expand funding for a range of early support initiatives and to strengthen the evidence base for such provision. For example, in 2024/25, the Department provided £8 million of funding to boost and evaluate the impact of 24 existing early support hubs, with a further £7 million in 2025/26. Findings from the evaluation will help inform the design and implementation of Young Futures Hubs, a national model for open-access support in communities.

This is in addition to other ongoing initiatives that deliver early intervention, for example through further investment and expansion of mental health support teams in schools so that up to 900,000 additional children and young people in England will have access to an NHS-funded mental health support team in their school or college by Spring 2026, compared to Spring 2025. We intend to reach full coverage by 2029.