Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the availability of support for children and young people with mental health needs who are not receiving statutory mental health treatment.

Our Green Paper ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’ sets out how we plan to increase the availability of support for children and young people, by reaching them through school or college. There are three key proposals:

- incentivising every school or college to identify and train a senior mental health lead;

- creating new mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges; and

- piloting a four-week waiting time to ensure swifter access to specialist NHS mental health services for those who need it.

In December 2018 we announced the first 25 ‘trailblazer’ sites that will implement the proposals to provide the new schools/college-based service, 12 of which will also pilot a four-week waiting time. This first wave of mental health support teams will be fully operational by the end of 2019, reaching over 1,000 schools and colleges. We are currently in the process of selecting sites for the 2019/20 wave of trailblazers.

Through the NHS Long Term Plan the National Health Service has set a goal of an extra 345,000 children and young people, aged 0-25, receiving support via NHS-funded mental health services by 2023/24.