Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help provide mental health support in schools for young people suffering from eating disorders.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
Having an eating disorder can often be devastating for young people suffering with the condition, as well as for those around them, which is why the department wants to ensure they have access to the right support, in the right place and at the right time.
Schools play a vital role in children’s mental health by promoting wellbeing and providing early targeted support and the department is committed to helping them do so effectively.
The department’s statutory health education curriculum, which should be taught in all schools from primary, includes a strong focus on mental health. This includes teaching pupils how to identify the early signs of mental wellbeing concerns and where and how to seek support if they are worried about their own or someone else’s mental health. As part of the secondary health curriculum, schools can teach pupils how to be safe and healthy and manage their lives in a positive way, seeking support when needed. They can also teach about eating disorders, drawing on qualified support or advice as needed for this specialist area. The statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education is currently under review. The department will be carrying out a full public consultation on the new guidance as soon as possible, and will be considering what more the department can do to strengthen content on eating disorders.
Early intervention is key when a child or young person is experiencing a mental health issue, including problems with eating. To expand access to early mental health support, including supporting schools in liaising with specialist services regarding eating disorders, the department is continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to schools and colleges. As of April 2024, MHSTs now cover 44% of pupils in schools and learners in further education in England. The department is extending coverage of MHSTs to at least 50% of pupils and learners by the end of March 2025.
Since 2016, extra funding has also gone into children and young people's community eating disorder services every year, with £53 million per year from 2021/22, rising to £54 million in 2023/24.
Asked by: Andrea Jenkyns (Conservative - Morley and Outwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce the time taken for children to receive (a) SEN assessments and (b) mental health treatment in Morley and Outwood constituency.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department wants to ensure that Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessments, where required, are conducted as quickly as possible, so that children and young people can access the support they need. In March 2023, the government set out its plans to reform and improve the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system through its SEND and alternative provision (AP) Improvement Plan. The plan commits to establishing a single national system that delivers for every child and young person with SEND, so that they enjoy their childhood, achieve good outcomes and are well prepared for adulthood and employment. Wakefield, Leeds, Calderdale and Bradford are in the SEND Change Programme, representing the Yorkshire and Humber region, to test these reforms. Specifically, these reforms focus on early intervention, improving the quality of EHC plans, streamlining the EHC plan process, reducing conflicts within the EHC plan system through better co-production and ultimately enhancing outcomes for children and young people.
The mental health of children is a national priority for this government and the department recognises that some children will need specialist support for their mental health issues. The department is supporting children and young people nationally, including those in the Morley and Outwood area, in the expansion and transformation of mental health services through an increase in spending through the NHS overall, as well as improved access to early mental health support.
To expand access to early mental health support, the department is continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to schools and colleges. As of April 2024, MHSTs now covers 44% of pupils in schools and learners in further education in England. The department is extending coverage of MHSTs to at least 50% of pupils and learners by the end of March 2025.
The department has also committed to offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, enabling them to introduce effective whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing. So far 16,700 settings have claimed a grant so far, including more than 8 in 10 state-funded secondary schools.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 16 April 2024 to Question 20454 on Mental Health Services: Stockport, how the £4.7 billion of increased funding for mental health has been spent; and how much and what proportion of that funding has been spent by (a) local authority and (b) constituency area.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Whilst a definitive answer is not possible, most of this additional funding was allocated to local health systems to be spent on expanding and transforming mental health services across the country. This is evidenced by:
- an increase in the number of adults accessing NHS Talking Therapies, with nearly 6 million people being supported over this five year period; an increase in the number of children and young people accessing mental health support, with over 750,000 children and young people under 18 years old supported through National Health Service funded mental health services, those with at least one contact, over the 12 months to January 2024;
- the roll out of approximately 400 mental health support teams in schools and colleges; the transformation of community mental health services for adults with approximately 288,000 adults and older adults with severe mental illness able to access improved physical health care, employment support, personalised and trauma informed care, medicines management and support for self-harm, and coexisting substance use over 2022/23, the latest full financial year for which figures are available;
- the establishment of around the clock and all-age urgent mental health helplines in every part of England;
- the investment of £30 million to meet the health needs of people sleeping rough, allowing for the establishment of 37 sites with new mental health provision for rough sleepers;
- the opening, or planned opening, of 15 specialist gambling treatment clinics, achieving representation across every region of England and including specialist provision for children and young people;
- the provision of £57 million of funding up to the end of March 2024, to embed local suicide and self-harm prevention activity, and to provide suicide bereavement support services in every local area.
Asked by: Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the findings of the study funded by the Nuffield Foundation entitled A generation at risk: Rebalancing education in the post-pandemic era, published in April 2024.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Predicting GCSE results is very difficult as there are many drivers that can interact in unforeseen ways. However, as the Nuffield Foundation’s report indicates, the pandemic deprived children of the advantages of studying together within the safety and support of their schools.
The pandemic created a unique challenge for teachers, staff, students and families. Minimising its impact on education and tackling the challenges has been the department’s priority from the start. Almost £5 billion was made available specifically for education recovery, with support focussed on those who needed it most, while giving education providers as much flexibility as possible to tailor-make help for their own circumstances. This includes the National Tutoring Programme (NTP), which focuses on disadvantaged pupils and those who have fallen behind, and has seen nearly five million tutoring courses start since it launched in November 2020.
The department knows that disadvantaged children and pupils with a special educational need or disability were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. The department continues to take a range of steps to give priority support and deliver programmes to help them, including improving the quality of teaching and curriculum resources, strengthening the school system and providing targeted support where needed. The department is also supporting disadvantaged pupils through the pupil premium, which is rising to almost £2.9 billion in 2024/25, which is the highest in cash terms since this funding began.
Further to this, latest results from 2023 show that over 45% of pupils sitting GCSEs achieved a grade 5 or higher in both English and mathematics, which is an increase of more than two percentage points compared with pre-pandemic 2019 levels and almost three percentage points when compared with 2017.
England recently came fourth in primary reading out of 43 countries which tested pupils of the same age in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Despite disruption from the pandemic, England’s score remained stable and well above the international and European averages.
Furthermore, the department has committed to making schools safe, calm and supportive environments, which promote and support mental wellbeing alongside delivering an excellent education.
Enrichment activities can deepen children’s in-school experience while supporting them to develop their socio-emotional skills. The department is now delivering the vision set out in its Schools White Paper, which states that every child and young person will have access to high-quality extra-curricular provision, including an entitlement to take part in sport, music and cultural opportunities.
Monitoring and measuring wellbeing in schools strengthens this, which is why the department’s guidance on promoting a whole-school approach to pupil wellbeing includes this as one of its eight key principles. You can find out more here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/614cc965d3bf7f718518029c/Promoting_children_and_young_people_s_mental_health_and_wellbeing.pdf.
The department is supporting all state schools and colleges with a grant to train a senior mental health lead. To date 15,100 settings have claimed a grant so far, including more than 7 in 10 state-funded secondary schools.
Intervening early is critical. To expand access to early mental health support, the department is continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) to schools and colleges. MHSTs deliver evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues, support the senior mental health lead (where established) in each school or college to introduce or develop whole school or college approaches and give timely advice to school and college staff, and liaise with external specialist services, to help children and young people get the right support to stay in education. The department is extending coverage of MHSTs to cover at least 50% by the end of March 2025.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the findings in the report by Action for Children in their report entitled Above and beyond, published on 25 April 2024 on the number of children that experience barriers to their education due to issues outside school, what steps her Department is taking to provide (a) early and (b) timely help to affected families.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government recognises the importance of providing early and timely help for children to support them to achieve their full potential at school so that they can thrive in adulthood.
At the last spending review, the department announced over £1 billion toward programmes to improve early help services from birth to adulthood, including delivering on Family Hubs and helping families facing multiple disadvantage through the Supporting Families and Holiday Activities and Food programmes.
The department’s statutory guidance, titled ‘Working together to safeguard children’, which was updated in 2023, confirms the expectation that local areas should have a range of evidence-based services available to provide early support for children and families who need it.
In ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department announced plans to build on the strengths of early help services through the implementation of Family Help. In the Families First for Children Pathfinder, the department is investigating how multi-disciplinary family help teams can provide targeted support to help children and families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity.
The department is spending more on children’s mental health services than ever before and working across government to ensure partnerships working across different sectors are delivering for children who need support.
The department is also continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams in education settings and supporting schools and colleges to train senior mental health leads, ensuring that as many young people as possible have access to the support they need.
Up to an additional £2.3 billion of additional funding a year since 2018/19 has been allocated to expand and transform mental health services. This is with the aim that 345,000 more children and young people will have been able to access NHS-funded mental health support by March 2024.
The department is making the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance statutory from September 2024. This sets out how schools, local authorities and other services need to work together to support pupils at risk of poor attendance and how support provided to these families is consistent across the country.
The department’s package of wide-ranging reforms designed to support schools to improve attendance means there were 440,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending in 2022/23 compared to 2021/22.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the findings in the report by Action for Children in their report entitled Above and beyond, published on 25 April 2024, on the number of children that experience barriers to their education due to issues outside school.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government recognises the importance of providing early and timely help for children to support them to achieve their full potential at school so that they can thrive in adulthood.
At the last spending review, the department announced over £1 billion toward programmes to improve early help services from birth to adulthood, including delivering on Family Hubs and helping families facing multiple disadvantage through the Supporting Families and Holiday Activities and Food programmes.
The department’s statutory guidance, titled ‘Working together to safeguard children’, which was updated in 2023, confirms the expectation that local areas should have a range of evidence-based services available to provide early support for children and families who need it.
In ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department announced plans to build on the strengths of early help services through the implementation of Family Help. In the Families First for Children Pathfinder, the department is investigating how multi-disciplinary family help teams can provide targeted support to help children and families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity.
The department is spending more on children’s mental health services than ever before and working across government to ensure partnerships working across different sectors are delivering for children who need support.
The department is also continuing to roll out Mental Health Support Teams in education settings and supporting schools and colleges to train senior mental health leads, ensuring that as many young people as possible have access to the support they need.
Up to an additional £2.3 billion of additional funding a year since 2018/19 has been allocated to expand and transform mental health services. This is with the aim that 345,000 more children and young people will have been able to access NHS-funded mental health support by March 2024.
The department is making the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance statutory from September 2024. This sets out how schools, local authorities and other services need to work together to support pupils at risk of poor attendance and how support provided to these families is consistent across the country.
The department’s package of wide-ranging reforms designed to support schools to improve attendance means there were 440,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending in 2022/23 compared to 2021/22.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to fund the national roll-out of mental health support teams across all schools and colleges in England.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Mental health support teams now cover approximately 44% of pupils in England and we are working to increase this coverage to 50% of pupils by March 2025. The further rollout of mental health support teams will be subject to future spending decisions.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on delivering a mental health support lead within primary and secondary schools.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department has offered all state-funded schools and colleges in England a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025. The department continues to deliver on the commitments that it made in the government’s 2018 response to the consultation on 'Transforming children and young people's mental health provision: a green paper' and to deliver on next steps. The government’s response to the consultation can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision-a-green-paper.
As at 30 November 2023, 15,100 schools and colleges had taken up this offer and claimed a grant, which represents 63% of the total number of settings that are eligible to apply. Breakdowns of the data, including by setting type, can be found in the department’s transparency data release which has been updated annually since the programme started and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision.
A list of schools and colleges receiving a senior mental health lead training grant is also published and updated throughout the year, which can be found here: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.publishing.service.gov.uk%2Fmedia%2F65b0cb50160765001118f741%2FSenior_mental_health_lead_training_January_2024_Update.ods&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK.
Asked by: Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services waiting lists.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We are committed to expanding and transforming National Health Service mental health care through the NHS Long Term Plan so more people, including children and young people, can be supported more quickly. The NHS forecasts that, between 2018/19 and 2023/24, spending on mental health services has increased by £4.7 billion in cash terms, compared to the target of £3.4 billion set out at the time of the NHS Long Term Plan. Nationally, overall spend on children and young people’s mental health services has increased from £841 million in 2019/20 to just over £1 billion in 2022/23. In the year to December 2023, over 750,000 children and young people aged under 18 years old were supported through NHS funded mental health services, a 31% increase since March 2021.
We are rolling out Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges in England, and as of May 2023, these teams cover 3.4 million pupils in England, or the equivalent to 35% of pupils. We expect this to increase to 44% by spring 2024, and we are extending coverage to 50% of pupils by the end of March 2025. We are also providing £8 million to fund 24 early support hubs across the country. This will improve access for children and young people to vital mental health support in the community, offering early interventions to improve wellbeing before their condition escalates further.
In addition, the NHS is working towards implementing five new waiting time standards for people requiring mental healthcare in both accident and emergency and in the community, to ensure timely access to the most appropriate, high-quality support. Four of these include children and young people.
Asked by: Olivia Blake (Labour - Sheffield, Hallam)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on accelerating the roll-out of mental health support teams in schools and colleges since publication of the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Meeting children’s social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs is a crucial aspect of strong special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision. This is why the SEND and alternative provision Improvement Plan works to facilitate a more joined-up response between the department and NHS England to support children with SEMH needs. Schools and colleges can play a vital role in promoting and supporting pupil and student mental health and wellbeing, both in providing early support and intervention and through liaison with specialist services as required.
Mental health support teams (MHSTs) have achieved their NHS Long Term Plan coverage ambition a year early and more teams are coming. As of March 2023, 3.4 million pupils and learners were covered by mental health support teams in schools and colleges in England, which equates to 35% of pupils and learners in England. The department estimates that 498 MHSTs will be up and running by April 2024, covering at least 44% of pupils and learners. The department further estimates there will be 600 teams covering at least 50% of all pupils across primary and secondary schools by 2025. New coverage data will be published in due course.