Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 23rd November 2017) - View Source

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 CCGs spend their allocated budget for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 30th November 2017

The shared National Health Service planning guidance sets out what clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and providers have to do in 2017/18 and 2018/19. For children and young people’s mental health services, this includes a requirement to increase access, so that 70,000 more people receive specialist treatment nationally by 2020, and to expand eating disorder services so that the new waiting time standard is met.

A joint letter to CCGs and trusts sent by NHS England Directors on 27 February 2017 specifically asked for confirmation that funds for children and young people were being used for the purpose intended.

NHS England published, for the first time in October 2016, a new integrated Five Year Forward View for Mental Health Dashboard. This shows what each CCG is spending on children’s mental health services.

This Mental Health Dashboard is designed to improve the transparency and accountability of CCGs, both to NHS England and to the populations they serve.

NHS England’s Mental Health Investment Standard requires CCGs to increase their mental health spend in line with their overall increase in allocation each year. This is planned to be met across England as a whole in 2017/18 and 2018/19.

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