Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve the mental health of children and young people with behavioural problems.

Children and young people’s mental health is a top priority for this Government and we are investing more than ever before across mental health. We are making an additional £1.4 billion available until 2019/20, transforming services and giving access to 70,000 additional children and young people. Our recent Green Paper aims to improve provision of services in schools, bolster links between schools and the National Health Service and pilot a four week waiting time.

The Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme includes training for staff in the NHS, local authorities’ children’s services, the voluntary and independent sector and in evidence based therapies to support children and young people with a range of issues and needs. This includes behavioural problems. This training is available to services across the country.

The programme can be accessed via this link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/cyp/iapt/