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 children and young people with mental health conditions receive the support they need throughout the covid-19 outbreak.

National Health Service mental health services have remained open for business throughout this time. Our community, talking therapies and children and young people’s services have deployed innovative digital tool to connect with people and provide ongoing support. For those with severe needs or in crisis, all NHS mental health providers have established 24 hours a day, seven days a week mental health crisis lines.

On 8 September, the Government launched a mental wellbeing campaign for children and young people. This involves an extension of Public Health England’s Every Mind Matters webpage with content specifically for children and young people and their parents and carers.

We are taking action to ensure that children and young people have access to support in schools. Our £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme will provide schools and colleges all over England with the knowledge and access to resources they need to support children and young people, teachers and parents.

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 funding underpins our aim for an additional 345,000 children and young people to be able to access support through NHS-funded services or school- and college-based mental health support teams.