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Written Question
Mental Health Services: Girls
Thursday 14th March 2024

Asked by: Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party - East Antrim)

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 increase girls' access to mental health services.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Health policy is devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. In England, through the NHS Long Term Plan, the Government is providing record levels of investment and increasing the mental health workforce, to expand and transform National Health Service mental health services in England. Almost £16 billion was invested in mental health in 2022/23, enabling 3.6 million people to be in contact with mental health services, a 10% increase on the previous year. Of these, nearly 560,000 were females under the age of 18 years old, a 12% increase on the previous year.

We are rolling out mental health support teams to schools and colleges in England. There are now around 400 mental health support teams in place, covering 3.4 million children, or approximately 35% of pupils. We estimate that this will increase to 44% by April 2024, and we are working to increase this coverage to 50% of pupils by March 2025.

In addition, we announced in October 2023 that £4.92 million would be available for 10 early support hubs in England. We are now providing an additional £3 million to expand the number of hubs to 24 across the country. This £8 million overall package will improve access for children and young people to vital mental health support, offering early interventions to improve wellbeing before their condition escalates further.


Written Question
Wetherby Young Offender Institution
Wednesday 13th March 2024

Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons publication entitled Report on an unannounced inspection of HMYOI Wetherby by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (20 November – 7 December 2023), published on 5 March 2024, what assessment he has made of the causes of levels of self-harm by female inmates.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

In 2021, the Youth Custody Service and NHS England co-commissioned the Centre for Mental Health to undertake a review into the needs of girls in the children and young people secure estate.

The report found that trauma-related stress is then communicated differently by boys and girls. More often, girls communicated stress through internalising behaviours such as self-harm, and boys through externalising behaviours.

Any girl in the secure estate who is at risk of self-harm will be supported through the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process, ensuring she has a dedicated case manager, and girls with the most complex needs will receive additional monitoring and more intensive case management.


Written Question
Mental Health Services: Children and Young People
Wednesday 13th March 2024

Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of evidence-based digital mental health innovations on reducing waiting lists for child and adolescent services.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

To date, there has been no assessment made to determine the potential impact of evidence-based digital mental health innovations on reducing waiting lists for child and adolescent services. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has made recommendations on four products for self-help digital cogitative behavioural therapy technologies for children and young people with low mood or anxiety, through their Early Value Assessment process. Whilst there was no definitive determination on the impact to waiting lists, early evidence suggests that these types of interventions can improve access for patients and can supplement existing treatments whilst patients are waiting for further treatment.


Written Question
Mental Health Services: Children and Young People
Tuesday 12th March 2024

Asked by: Peter Gibson (Conservative - Darlington)

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 the waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services in the Tees Esk Wear Mental Health Trust region.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing at least an additional £2.3 billion a year in expanding and transforming National Health Service mental health services by March 2024, compared to 2018/19. As part of this, an extra 345,000 more children and young people will be able to get the NHS-funded mental health support they need.

NHS England is working on implementing five new access and waiting time standards for mental health services, including one for children and their families and carers to start receiving community-based mental health care within four weeks of referral.

A consultation pilot began in Teesside in October 2023, which has allowed families to be re-directed to appropriate support, and for services to be able to reinvest time back into the backlog of assessments. The trust is currently reviewing the implementation and extension of this pilot into Durham and Darlington.


Written Question
Autism and Learning Disability: Hospital Wards
Friday 8th March 2024

Asked by: Baroness Browning (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address barriers to discharge from mental health inpatient units for autistic people and people with learning disabilities related to the provision of (1) suitable housing, and (2) social care support.

Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

On 26 January 2024, we published statutory guidance on discharge from mental health inpatient settings. This guidance sets out key principles for how National Health Service bodies and local authorities across adult and children’s services should work together to support people to be discharged from mental health inpatient services, including mental health inpatient services for people with a learning disability and for autistic people. This guidance states that strong links should be made with relevant community services prior to, and during, the person’s stay in hospital, and that this should include links in relation to meeting the person’s needs related to health, social care, education, housing, and any other individual needs.

In 2023/24, we are investing an additional £121 million to improve community support, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. This includes funding for children and young people’s keyworkers. We continue to support the delivery of new supported housing by providing capital subsidies to providers, through the Care and Support Specialised Housing Fund and the Affordable Homes Programme in England. We have also made available up to £8.6 billion over this and next financial year, to support adult social care and discharge.


Written Question
Mobile Phones: Health Hazards
Tuesday 5th March 2024

Asked by: Derek Thomas (Conservative - St Ives)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will ask the Chief Medical Officers to update their review of the potential impact of mobile phone usage from a young age on children's development.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education recently reviewed the evidence, and found that there is still no clear scientific consensus of a negative impact of screentime and social media use on the mental health, or neurological or functional development of children and young people, and concerns are generally not supported through population-level data. Whilst further research is needed to better understand these issues, there are no plans to ask the Chief Medical Officers to update their review.


Written Question
Mental Health Services: Access
Tuesday 5th March 2024

Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South)

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 improve access to mental health services.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

  • We increased investment in mental health services by close to a billion pounds in 2022-23 compared to the previous year, with almost £16 billion going on mental health care. This enabled 3.6 million people to access mental health support, a 10% increase from 2021-22.

  • We are also funding 24 early support hubs for young people across England, one of which will serve constituents in the Honourable Member’s Luton constituency.


Written Question
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Diagnosis
Friday 1st March 2024

Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce the backlog of ADHD assessments.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including access to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines. NICE guidelines for ADHD diagnosis and management aim to improve the diagnosis of ADHD and the quality of care and support people receive.

Data on the number of people waiting for an ADHD diagnosis and how long they have been waiting is not currently collected nationally but may be held locally by NHS trusts or ICBs.

We know how vital it is to have timely diagnoses for ADHD, and we are committed to reducing assessment and diagnosis delays. We are exploring options to improve data collection and reporting on ADHD assessment waiting times to help improve access to ADHD assessments in a timely way and in line with the NICE guidelines. The National Institute for Health and Care Research has commissioned a research project to provide initial insights into local ADHD assessment waiting times data collection. NHS England is also currently scoping a national programme of work on ADHD.

With respect to assessments for ADHD for children and young people, we know that children and young people often seek an ADHD diagnosis through Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. The NHS Long Term Plan commits an additional £2.3 billion a year for the expansion and transformation of mental health services in England by March 2024.


Written Question
Rural Areas: Mental Health Services
Thursday 29th February 2024

Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fourth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2022-23 on Rural Mental Health, HC248, published on 9 May 2023, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations in the section entitled Rural mental health service provision, policy and strategy development.

Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We remain committed to supporting thriving rural communities, as set out in our report Unleashing Rural Opportunity, published in June 2023.

Since the launch of the EFRA Committee’s inquiry in 2021, considerable progress has been made to help ensure access to mental health services in rural areas. The Government published its Response to the EFRA Committee Report on Rural Mental Health in October 2023.

The response recognised that people living and working in rural areas may face specific challenges in accessing the mental health services that they need and set out the various actions being taken forward to address mental health needs.

Key actions include:

  • Publication of the Suicide prevention strategy for England: 2023 to 2028 in September 2023, which set out ambitions over the next five years to reduce suicide rates, improve support for people who have self-harmed, and improve support for people bereaved by suicide. The strategy also identifies actions to tackle known risk factors, several of which are relevant for agricultural and veterinary workers, including financial difficulty and economic adversity, and social isolation and loneliness, while also embedding multiple actions to tackle emerging means of suicide.

  • The launch of the Department for Health and Social Care’s £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund in August 2023. This was to support the suicide prevention voluntary, charity and social enterprise sector to deliver activity that helps meet the increased demand for support, and to embed preventive activity that can help to prevent suicides and stem the flow into crisis services. A list of organisations that have been awarded funding will be published soon.

  • As committed to in the NHS Long Term Plan, published in 2019, we are continuing work to improve and widen access to care for children and adults needing mental health support. Over the 12 months to December 2023, 750,000 children and young people aged under 18 were supported through NHS-funded mental health services (with at least one contact) - a 31% increase since March 2021.

  • Additionally, we are ahead of schedule on rolling out Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges. We achieved our original ambition of covering 25% of pupils in England a year earlier than planned and we expect this to increase to 4.2 million pupils, or 44% of the pupil population, by March 2024. We have plans to go further, extending coverage to at least 50% of pupils by the end of March 2025.

To help improve the service and support on offer to farmers we will make up to £500,000 available to deliver projects that support mental health in the farming sector. This will build on the support already on offer through the Farming Resilience Fund, which has benefitted over 19,000 farmers to date.


Written Question
Schools: Mental Health Services
Tuesday 27th February 2024

Asked by: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential (a) merits of implementing a mental health support team plus model in schools and (b) impact of such an approach on the mental wellbeing of children and young people.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

In December 2017, the government published a consultation to gather views on the proposals set out in its publication, ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’. The green paper is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a823518e5274a2e87dc1b56/Transforming_children_and_young_people_s_mental_health_provision.pdf.

The government response to the consultation was published in July 2018: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b583d30ed915d0b6985cc21/government-response-to-consultation-on-transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health.pdf. It outlined a commitment to implement three core proposals that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), NHS England, the Department for Education and Health Education England would jointly take forward, one of which was to establish new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs), working in or near schools and colleges. MHSTs add value to support that settings already have in place, and more broadly are part of a wider programme of mental health transformation set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

As of 31 March 2023, MHSTs covered 35% of pupils in schools and learners in further education settings in England. We are extending coverage of MHSTs to an estimated 44% of pupils and learners by the end of this financial year, and at least 50% by the end of March 2025.

The Early Evaluation of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme, published by the National Institute for Health Research in February 2023, revealed substantial progress in MHST implementation, despite challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this was a process evaluation, early impacts include improved school and college staff knowledge and confidence in dealing with mental health issues, improved access to support for some groups, and improvements in partnership working. The study also found that the experiences of the majority of children and young people who had contact with an MHST were positive. The early evaluation is available here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-social-sciences/social-policy/BRACE/trailblazer.pdf.

Work is already underway with partners to ensure that learnings are used to inform current and future practice. Since the MHST Trailblazers became operational in 2018/19, the Education Mental Health Practitioner curriculum has been strengthened in response to feedback on needs such as learning disabilities and autism, challenging behaviour and support for parents. In addition, a new Senior Wellbeing Practitioner role was launched in 2023 to support widening the MHST skillset and career progression opportunities.

The department, together with partners, will continue to listen to feedback and a planned phase 2 longer-term outcome evaluation, to inform MHST roll out and drive improvements in evidence-based mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children and young people.