Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Acute Mental Health Care Pathway for Adults and Older Adults is planned to include waiting times benchmarks.

Prompt access is an essential component of safe care for acutely unwell people. The Acute Mental Health Care Pathway for Adults and Older Adults Pathway, which is currently being finalised for publication, is planned to include key interventions focused on ensuring that people are not waiting an undue length of time to access acute mental health care, whether in an inpatient or community setting.

The pathway will draw on existing good practice examples from areas where timely access is consistently delivered, highlighting the common features of these systems which make this possible, such as robust community-based provision and whole-system capacity management.