Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 16 of Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper, published by his Department on 4 March 2016, what estimate he has made of the number of children and young people who were unable to receive treatment due to capacity issues in each of the last five years.

The Department does not hold data on the reasons why children and young people do not receive treatment in National Health Service-funded children and young people’s mental health services. There are a range of reasons, other than issues with capacity, why children and young people may not access treatment through NHS mental health services (for example, children and young people may not benefit from specialist services while self-help or accessing support in schools might be more beneficial).