Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 19 of the document entitled, Stepping Forward to 2020/21, published by Health Education England in 2017, what progress has been made on NHS England's target of recruiting an additional 4,500 staff in children and young people’s mental health by 2021 across all relevant fields.

The figures from the children and young people’s mental health national benchmarking collection show that the employed workforce has increased by 4,557 to 14,857 whole time equivalents between December 2015 and December 2018.

The national benchmarking study of the children and young people’s mental health workforce is available at the following link:

https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/mental-health/children-young-peoples-mental-health-services