Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what NHS mental health support is in place for young people.

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local populations. We are supporting them to expand mental health services through the NHS Long Term Plan, which commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/2024 compared to 2018/2019.

Part of this increased investment will enable an additional 345,000 children and young people aged between 0-25 years of age to access National Health Service-funded mental health services and mental health support teams in schools and colleges. Spend for children and young people’s mental health services has increased from £841.4 million in 2019/2020 to £994.8 million in 2021/2022, with a planned spend of £1.0815 billion in 2022/2023. This funding is across both NHS specialised commissioning and local commissioning. The source of this data is the NHS England dashboard, which is published quarterly. Previous and most recent NHS mental health dashboards are available at the following link:

www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-mental-health-dashboard

We are making good progress on expanding access year on year, as the number of children and young people aged under 18 supported through NHS-funded mental health services, with at least one contact with services, was 689,621 in the year up to July 2022 compared to 618,537 in the year up to July 2021.

As of spring 2022, there were 287 mental health support teams in place in around 4,700 schools and colleges across the country, offering support to children experiencing anxiety, depression, and other common mental health issues. Mental health support teams now cover 26% of pupils, a year earlier than originally planned. By next month we except this to have increased to 399 teams, covering around 35% of pupils.