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 improve access to mental health services in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools.
We remain committed to investing at least £2.3 billion of extra funding a year into mental health services by 2023-24 through the NHS Long Term Plan. This will see an additional 345,000 children and young people able to access support through National Health Service-funded services or school- and college-based mental health support teams.
Mental health support teams, which we are introducing in line with our children and young people’s mental health Green Paper, are part of this service expansion and transformation. We remain committed to delivering the other core proposals of the Green Paper, which will pilot a four-week waiting time for specialist NHS services, so that there is swifter access to specialist NHS services.