Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) monitor and (b) reduce waiting times for CAMHS services.

We have introduced two waiting time standards relating to mental health services for children and young people and the National Health Service is currently on track to meet both of these by April 2021.

The first is for 95% of children (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases. The second aims for 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis to receive treatment within two weeks of referral.

Our Green Paper on transforming children and young people’s mental health provision, jointly published with the Department for Education, sets out how we plan to go further. We are piloting a four-week waiting time in 12 areas to improve access to children and young people’s specialist mental health services and are introducing new schools- and college-based mental health support teams.