Children: Mental Health

(asked on 14th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to provide additional funding for early support for children with mental health problems.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 20th May 2019

​The Department for Education is working closely with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to support schools and colleges to provide support for children and young people with emerging mental health issues and secure specialist treatment where it is needed.

The NHS Long Term Plan published in January 2019 announced that by 2023/24 an extra 345,000 children and young people in England aged 0-25 will receive mental health support via NHS funded mental health services and new Mental Health Support Teams. 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. Spending on children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than adult services, and faster than other NHS spending. As set out in the 'Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision' green paper, the new support teams will work with groups of schools and colleges to provide swift access to support for children and young people with emerging and mild and moderate needs and support referrals to more specialist treatment.

The Department for Education is providing up to £95 million between 2019/20 and 2023/24 to support the delivery of the green paper proposals, including the costs of a significant training programme for senior mental health leads, to help schools and colleges to put in place whole school approaches to supporting pupil mental health.​

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