Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support voluntary sector providers of mental health services.

Since 2020, the Department provided £10.2 million of additional funding to support mental health charities, including Samaritans and the Campaign Against Living Miserably, and over £34 million to organisations supporting people who experience loneliness. The Department also invested £5.4 million to support suicide prevention through 113 voluntary and community sector organisations, through the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund. This was part of the Government's unprecedented £750 million package of support for the voluntary sector during the pandemic, which benefited over 14,000 charities. In addition, the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund will run from 2023 to March 2025 to support voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations to deliver suicide prevention activity.