Mental Health Services: Children in Care

(asked on 18th April 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of child and adolescent mental health services in improving the mental health outcomes of children who have been in care.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 30th April 2019

The Government asked the Care Quality Commission (CQC), to undertake in 2017/18 an in depth thematic review of children and young people’s mental health services. The CQC published the review in two phases, with a first report in October 2017 and the second in March 2018, describing the findings and outlining its recommendations. The CQC found that the quality of mental health services for children and young people, including those who have been in care, is varied across England. The report is available at the following link:

https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/themed-work/are-we-listening-review-children-young-peoples-mental-health-services

In terms of improving services for children who have been in care, in 2016, the Department for Health and Social Care and the Department for Education commissioned the Social Care Institute for Excellence to convene an expert working group to ensure that the emotional and mental health needs of children and young people in care, adopted from care, under kinship care, under Special Guardianship Orders, as well as care leavers, would be better met. The group’s report was published in November 2017 and many of their recommendations and findings are being addressed through a pilot scheme which will trial a new high quality mental health assessment framework that looked after children receive on entry to care, with a strong focus on evaluation and sharing learning rapidly, developed by the Anna Freud Centre. The report is available at the following link:

https://www.scie.org.uk/children/care/mental-health/report

The CQC’s work informed the development of the Green Paper on Children and Young People’ mental health services; the new Mental Health Support Teams will increase access to services for looked after children and previously looked after children. The significant expansion of children’s mental health services in the NHS Long Term Plan will also improve access to services for this group.

Reticulating Splines