Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure that paediatric mental health services are financially supported to cope with a potential increase in referrals as a result of the covid-19 outbreak.

We are committed through our NHS Long Term Plan to investing at least £2.3 billion of extra funding a year into mental health services by 2023-24. This will see an additional 345,000 children and young people able to access support through National Health Service-funded services or school- and college-based mental health support teams.

In 2018 we announced the first 25 trailblazer sites delivering 59 mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges with the first becoming operational earlier this year. In July 2019, NHS England confirmed a further 57 areas would develop 123 new mental health support teams and a number of these have been commissioned and training has begun.