Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of teenage mental health services.

Improving children and young people’s mental health is a Government priority and part of our commitment to achieving equality between mental and physical health.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce was launched in September to look at how we can provide more joined up and accessible services built around the needs of children, young people and their families. The Government report of the Taskforce’s findings, Future in mind, was published today, and sets out a clear national ambition in the form of key aspirations that the Government would wish to see by 2020. This includes: tackling stigma and improving attitudes, more access and waiting time standards, information and self-help via online tools and apps, changing the way services are commissioned, ‘one stop shop’ support services in the community, improved access to support through named points of contact in specialist mental health services and schools, improved care for children and young people in crisis, mental health training for health professionals including general practitioners, teachers and others who work with children and young people and improved access for children and young people who are particularly vulnerable.

Additionally, the Deputy Prime Minister announced this weekend that children and young people’s mental health services in England will receive £250 million a year over the course of the next Parliament. This investment will provide additional funding to improve access to high quality services across the country so that at least 110,000 more children and young people with mental health problems are able to receive treatment between now and 2019/20 and that there are new waiting times standards. This includes increased funding for the national roll-out and extension of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, which is a transformation programme which aims to improve access to evidence-based psychological therapies for children and young people. Additionally, the investment will also improve access to perinatal mental health services for women experiencing mental ill health during either the antenatal or perinatal period.