Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report Children and young people’s mental health services: Targets, progress and barriers to improvement published by the Education Policy Institute on 10 December.

We have made no such assessment. However, we are committed to increasing investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by March 2024 and have set out our aim in the NHS Long Term Plan for an additional 345,000 children and young people to be able to get the mental health support they need.

We continue to work with the Department for Education to implement the proposals of the Government’s Transforming children and young people’s mental health green paper. A copy of the green paper is attached.

There are now almost 400 mental health support teams in place in schools and colleges across England. Mental health support teams now cover over three million children or approximately 35% of pupils in schools and colleges. We aim to increase this coverage to 50% by April 2025.