Speeches

Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2015 to Question 227900, how much of the £250 million additional funding that was committed has been spent; and how many children and young people with mental health problems this funding has supported.

Alistair Burt

The Government will be making available £1.4 billion over the course of this Parliament to transform children and young people’s mental health. £173 million of this has been allocated in 2015-16.

It is too early to quantify how many Children and Young People have benefited from this additional investment.

A significant proportion of the additional funding is being allocated to clinical commissioning groups upon completion of the assurance of Local Transformation Plans which every area has produced on children and young people’s mental health. These plans cover the full spectrum of mental health issues, from prevention and resilience building, to support and care for existing and emerging mental health problems, as well as transitions between services and addressing the needs of the most vulnerable. Plans are currently being assured by NHS England’s regional assurance teams. Funding is being released as individual plans receive a satisfactory assessment and expenditure will be monitored over the remainder of this financial year.

In addition, the additional funding available this year will support continued improvement of existing services through the expansion of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. It will also strengthen the capacity and capability of workforce including providing training and improve data and information in order to deliver the vision set out in Future in Mind by 2020.