Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to provide adequate mental health support for (a) transgender and (b) gender-questioning children in schools.

It is up to schools to decide, in dialogue with parents, how to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pupils, including transgender and gender-questioning pupils. The Government Equalities Office has provided guidance and links to support and services for LGBT individuals, including support for children and young people. This guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advice-and-support-for-lgbt-people#children-and-young-people-up-to-the-age-of-19.

Counselling can play an effective role as part of a whole school approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing. To support the provision of counselling support in schools, the Department published a blueprint for school counselling services. This provides schools with practical evidence-based advice informed by schools and counselling experts, on how to deliver high quality school-based counselling. It also offers information on how to ensure that children who have a higher prevalence of mental illness, including those who are LGBT, can access counselling provision.

This is available here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/counselling-in-schools.

The Government is also making sure that there is better access to specialist mental health support and treatment for pupils that need it. In March, the Government appointed the first ever National Adviser for LGBT Health in the NHS and Advisory Panel, to help improve the health and wellbeing of LGBT people. Under the NHS long term plan, mental health services will continue to receive a growing share of the NHS budget, with funding to grow by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. For the first time, funding for children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending. This will mean that by 2023/24 an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 will receive mental health support via NHS-funded mental health services and school or college-based Mental Health Support Teams.