Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the CAMHS four week referral and one week urgent referral targets are met across the country.

For children and young people, we have set up the first standard to improve access to eating disorder services for children and young people. This states that 95% of children with an eating disorder will receive treatment within one week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases. Prior to the pandemic, significant progress had been made towards achieving the 95% access target.

Since the pandemic, there has been a significant increase in demand and more children and young people with an eating disorder are accessing support than ever before. The number of children and young people entering urgent treatment for an eating disorder has increased by 11% to 2,632 in 2021/2022 compared to 2020/2021. The year before this it increased by 73% from 1,373 to 2,372 children and young people.

This increase in demand has affected performance against the waiting timing standard and the latest figures show that this is not currently being met. We remain committed to delivering this waiting time standard. NHS England continues to work with system leaders and regions and to ask that areas prioritise service delivery and investment to meet the needs of these vulnerable young people.

Since 2016, extra funding is going into children and young people's community eating disorder services every year, with £53 million per year from 2021/2022, rising to £54 million in 2023/2024. This extra funding will enhance the capacity of the 70 new or improved community eating disorder teams covering the whole of the country.

We acknowledge that more support is still needed, which is why we are also rolling out mental health support teams as fast as we can, ahead of plan, as well as establishing 24/7 crisis lines.