Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time is for a child and adolescent mental health services referral by clinical commissioning group in England.

There is currently no overall waiting time standard for children and young people’s mental health services and therefore this information is not collected centrally. However, there are two waiting time standards which apply to specific areas. The first standard is for young people’s eating disorder services, which is that urgent cases should be seen within one week and non-urgent cases within four weeks. The latest data (for quarter 4 of 2018/19) shows that 80.6 % of children and young people with eating disorders were seen within one week (urgent) and 82.4 % of children and young people with eating disorders were seen within four weeks (routine).

The second standard is for first episode of psychosis, where a patient should be seen within two weeks. This standard was met in 75.3% of cases although the data refers to patients of all ages and is not available by age group.