Government Response

The Government responded to this petition on Tuesday 5th March 2019

Mental health funding will grow by at least £2.3bn a year by 2023/24, with funding for children and young people’s mental health growing faster than overall NHS funding.

Children and young people’s mental health is a top priority for this government.

Since the petition began on 2 November 2018, NHS England has published the NHS Long Term Plan, which set out how mental health funding will grow by at least £2.3bn a year by 2023/24, with funding for children and young people’s mental health services growing faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending.

The Government is committed to improving access to mental health services for children and young people and ensuring that mental health support is available to all children and young people who need it. The Department has an extensive programme of work underway to improve support for children and young people’s mental health and we are on track to increase access as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. The new investment announced in the Long-Term Plan will mean that by 2023/24 an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 will receive mental health support via NHS-funded mental health services and school- or college-based mental health support teams.

In addition, the Government has announced further plans to improve early intervention for mild to moderate mental health conditions, through better join up with schools and colleges. Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision”, published in December 2017, set out our plans to improve access to mental health services for children through its three key proposals: creating new Mental Health Support Teams working in and near schools and colleges to support children and young people with mild to moderate mental health conditions; piloting a four-week waiting time for access to specialist NHS children’s mental health services; and training Designated Senior Leads in mental health in schools and colleges. This new schools-based service is in addition to existing provision for children and young people with mental health needs.

Although relatively rare, the number of suicides amongst children and young people remains a concern. The National Suicide Prevention Strategy highlights children and young people as a group requiring tailored approaches to meet their mental health needs. We published the first Cross-Government Suicide Prevention Workplan in January 2019 which sets out an ambitious programme for suicide prevention across national and local government. This workplan highlights steps we are taking across government to reduce suicides in children and young people: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/suicide-prevention-cross-government-plan.

Department of Health and Social Care.

This is a revised response. The Petitions Committee requested a response that more directly addressed the request of the petition. You can find the original response towards the bottom of the petition page (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/231146)