Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce waiting times for children and adolescent mental health services.

We are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year to enable an extra two million people in England, including 345,000 children and young people, to access National Health Service-funded mental health support by 2023/24. We have made a further £500 million available in 2021/22, which includes £79 million to ensure that approximately 22,500 more children and young people can access community mental health services. A further 2,000 children and young people will be able to access eating disorder services and we are accelerating the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have piloted a four-week waiting time standard to inform an assessment of the merits of introducing a waiting time standard. NHS England and NHS Improvement consulted on the definition and introduction of five waiting time standards. The consultation closed on 1 September 2021 and found that more than 80% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the proposal to introduce additional mental health access and waiting time measures, including for children and young people presenting to community-based mental health services. The consultation report is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/02/widespread-support-for-proposed-nhs-mental-health-access-standards-for-patients/

We will work with NHS England and NHS Improvement on the next steps for the proposed mental health access and waiting measures.