Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 17th May 2023) - View Source

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 increase the number of children and adolescent mental health services appointments.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 24th May 2023

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to increasing investment into National Health Service mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by March 2024. Part of this increased investment will enable an additional 345,000 children and young people to be able to access NHS funded mental health support, including through appointments with children and adolescent mental health services by March 2024.

To support this, our aim is to grow the mental health workforce by an additional 27,000 staff by March 2024. December 2022 figures show an increase of over 8,900, full-time equivalent staff in the mental health workforce compared to December 2021 and over 20,700 more compared to December 2010.

We are making good progress on expanding access to mental health care for children and young people year on year. 689,621 children and young people in England aged under 18 years old were supported with at least one contact in the year up to July 2022 compared to 618,537 in the year up to July 2021.

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