Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase resources for identifying and supporting people in further education who have a mental health condition.

Supporting people experiencing mental health issues to develop their confidence and skills is a priority for this government, and further education providers have an important role to play. We invest in this via the disadvantage element of the participation funding for 16-19 year olds, and through the Adult Education Budget for students aged 19 and over. This sits alongside an additional £1.4bn we are investing in children and young people’s mental health through the NHS.

The Department for Education (DfE) is also running the Community Learning Mental Health programme, comprising 57 pilot projects around the country. This supports students with mild to moderate mental health difficulties access learning. Findings from this will be available early 2018, which will inform future work. Additionally, the DfE is currently working alongside the Department of Health to develop a children and young people’s mental health green paper, which will be published by the end of the year. Part of this work is consideration of how best to improve links between schools, colleges and NHS mental health services.