Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many patients are currently under the care of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in NHS England;  how many children are currently on waiting lists for assessment; what percentage of CAMHS patients currently transition to Adult Mental Health Services (AMHS); and what further support they are providing to CAMHS in order to provide more urgent (1) support, and (2) treatment, to children and young people with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties.

The information requested is not collected centrally. The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services Tier Framework is no longer used to commission or provide mental health services universally across England and the number of patients in such services is not identifiable in the NHS Mental Health Services Data Set.

Data on the number of children on a waiting list for assessment is not collected, as a singled national access and waiting time standard for children and young people’s mental health services has not yet been defined.

Data on the number of children and young people transitioning from children and young people’s mental health services to adult mental health services is not collected, as a pathway for analysis has not been defined.

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population. We are supporting them to expand mental health services through the NHS Long Term Plan, which commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. This will allow an extra two million people by 2023/24, including 345,000 more children and young people, to access National Health Service funded mental health support.

We also provided an additional £79 million for 2021/22 to allow around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services.

NHS England has also consulted on the potential to introduce five new waiting time standards as part of its clinically led review of NHS access standards. One of these is that children, young people and their families/carers presenting to community-based mental health services should start to receive care within four weeks from referral. We are now working with NHS England on the next steps.

As a first step to introduce the five new waiting time standards, 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.