Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure adequate investment in early intervention treatments for child and adolescent mental health services.

Children and young people’s (CYP) mental health is a top priority for this Government and we are clear that early intervention is vital.

We are making an additional £1.4 billion available for transformation of CYP mental health services from 2015/16 – 2019/20, and have committed to ensuring an additional 70,000 CYP a year will access National Health Service mental health treatment by 2020. We have introduced the first ever waiting times standard for mental health and will shortly be publishing a joint Green Paper on CYP mental health with the Department for Education, focussing on early intervention.