Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ensure that early intervention mental health support is available to children and young people in (a) Brighton and Hove and (b) nationally; and if he will make a statement.

Following on from our Green Paper ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision: a green paper’, we are incentivising every school or college to identify and train a Senior Lead for Mental Health and are creating new mental health support teams in and near schools and colleges. The mental health support teams are designed to provide low-level and early mental health interventions, to prevent more severe cases from developing and create a broader wellbeing culture in schools.

We are aiming to cover 20-25% of the country with mental health support teams by 2023/24. We expect the first wave of trailblazer mental health support teams to be fully operational by the end of this year.

The wider roll-out will be informed by the evaluation of the initial trailblazers. Brighton and Hove is one of the first wave of trailblazer areas.

Mental health across all ages will receive a growing share of the National Health Service budget, worth a further £2.3 billion a year in real terms by 2023/24.