Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to assist young people experiencing anxiety and depression.

Our Government is committed to delivering the vision set out in the Future in Mind report, which sets out the five-year vision of major system-wide transformation to improve access to high-quality mental health care for all children and young people when they need it and as close to home as possible. Since its publication in March 2015, working alongside our partners in Government and arm’s length bodies, progress has been made on many of the key ambitions to improve access to high-quality support across the country.

The core delivery mechanism for this ambitious programme of transformation are Local Transformation Plans, which are publically available and should cover the full spectrum of need for children and young people who have existing or emerging mental health problems, including anxiety and depression.

To support this transformation, an additional £1.4 billion funding has been made available over the course of this Parliament. This will also enable the expansion and extension of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme so that high quality evidence-based interventions, including for anxiety and depression, can be delivered by children and young people’s mental health services across England.