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 reduce waiting times for children receiving initial mental health treatment in West Kent.

The Department has introduced two waiting time standards for children and young people and are on track to meet both of these standards. The first aims for 95% of children (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases by 2020/21. 81.3% of children and young people’s eating disorder patients started urgent treatment within one week and 80.2% of patients started routine treatment within four weeks in April to June 2018. The second aims for 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis to receive treatment within two weeks of referral. Nationally, the National Health Service is exceeding the target, with 76.2% of patients started treatment within two weeks in November 2018.

West Kent Clinical Commissioning Group, working with North East London Foundation Trust, continues to embed new service modelling and transform services for children and young people in Kent. The new model provides a Single Point of Access along with clear and seamless pathways to support ranging from Universal ‘Early Help’ through to highly specialist care with better transition between services. During the initial six months the service underwent significant changes designed to address access and treatment waiting times. This included the provision of a Crisis Service with additional capacity, digital therapy access offers and national and local recruitment campaigns to increase capacity and resource.