Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that mental health support is available for young people waiting for mental health treatments.

Following on from our Green Paper on transforming children and young people’s mental health, we are:

- incentivising every school or college to identify and train a Senior Lead for Mental Health;

- creating new mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges; and

- piloting a four-week waiting time to allow swifter access to specialist NHS services for those children and young people who need them

Once implemented, the Green Paper has the potential to significantly improve early intervention and prevention, along with expanding the current children and young people’s mental health workforce.