Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. Part of this increased investment will enable an additional 345,000 children and young people to access National Health Service-funded mental health support.

In recognition of the increased demand created by the COVID-19 pandemic, we invested an extra £79 million in 2021/22 to expand children’s mental health services, including enabling approximately 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services, 2,000 more to access eating disorder services and accelerating the coverage of mental health support teams in schools and colleges.

NHS England has consulted on the potential to introduce five new waiting time standards as part of its Clinically-led Review of NHS Access Standards, including that children, young people and their families, presenting to community-based mental health services should start to receive care within four weeks from referral. As a first step, NHS England has recently shared and promoted guidance with its local system partners to consistently report waiting times to support the development of a baseline position. The Department is now working with NHS England on the next steps for introducing the new access and waiting time standards for mental health services.

Assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may also happen through child and adolescent mental health services. Building on last year’s investment of £13 million through the NHS Long Term Plan and COVID-19 Mental Health Recovery Plan, we will invest £2.5 million in 2022/23 to test and embed improved autism diagnostic pathways.

NHS England are developing a national framework to set out the process of how children, young people and adults should receive an autism diagnosis. The aim of this work is to improve the quality of these diagnostic processes and reduce waiting times.

Integrated care boards and NHS trusts should have due regard to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management. The guideline aims to improve the diagnosis of ADHD and to improve the quality of care and support for people of all ages who are diagnosed with ADHD.