Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to help ensure equity in the performance of clinical commissioning groups on the (a) timeliness and (b) quality of mental health treatments for children after receipt of a referral for such treatment.

We have committed to at least an additional 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 being able to access mental health support by 2023/24.

Our Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health aims to improve the provision of services for children. One of the key proposals of the Green Paper is to create new Mental Health Support Teams in and near groups of schools and colleges, to enable children to get timely support for mild to moderate conditions.

In December 2018, we announced 25 Trailblazer sites to run the first wave of 59 Mental Health Support Teams. In 12 of these areas we are also testing a four-week wait standard, exploring how Mental Health Support Teams and specialist services can work together to achieve more timely access to appropriate treatment.