Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to establish community mental health hubs for children during school holidays.

This year, the Government is again investing over £200 million in our holiday activities and food programme (HAF), with all local authorities in England delivering in the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays. The programme provides heathy meals, enriching activities and free childcare places to children from low-income families, benefiting their physical and mental health and wellbeing. HAF clubs can also act as a referral point for children and families to the support and services they need. Last summer, our programme reached around 600,000 children across England, including over 475,000 children eligible for free school meals across England.

The Department has been working with other Government Departments, stakeholders and the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise sector to better understand the role that “Early Support Hubs” might play in supporting children and young people’s mental wellbeing. As part of that, we have recently commissioned research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research to establish the effectiveness of the open access “hub” model of early intervention and prevention support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Clinical commissioning groups and local authorities work with local partners to understand local needs and commission services on that basis. This means that local areas are able to design and fund a hub model if they think it would meet local need.