Mental Health Services: Children and Young People

(asked on 13th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is on course to meet its 2024 target of a maximum four-week waiting time for children and young people who are referred to a mental health specialist.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 21st January 2020

NHS England is currently working nationally with 12 pilot sites to test the feasibility of delivering a four-week waiting time for access to National Health Service mental health support. Delivering and maintaining a waiting time across the large and complex children and young people’s mental health pathway is a challenge, and we are proceeding carefully so as not to establish any perverse incentives.

The pilots will test not only what it takes to achieve and maintain a four-week waiting time, but also how best to define and measure this access to specialist children and young people’s mental health services.

The agreed pilots end in 2020/21. Results will then be evaluated. The Department and NHS England will consider the results of the evaluation and will look at its implications for the development and rollout of access and waiting time standards for all children and young people who need specialist mental health services.

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