Children and Young People with Complex Needs — House of Commons, 2021-12-10
Topic: Health
Margaret Ann Throup (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I will come to that later in my speech The lead provider works collaboratively with other providers to ensure the appropriate level of in-patient provision in their area; it is important that we have the right mix of provision, whether it is in-patient or community support. They also ensure that the right community services are available to support children and young people when they are discharged to prevent further crises Wherever possible, collaboratives will aim to provide high-quality alternatives to admission. However, where stays are required, they should be short and close to home in a high-quality, safe and therapeutic service. We must of course ensure that the rights of children and young people who are placed under the Mental Health Act 1983 are respected We published our White Paper on reforming the Mental Health Act in January 2021, setting out proposals to make the Act work better for people. We are committed to ensuring that the reforms we want to make to the Act also benefit children and young people. We will work to ensure that the rights we plan to introduce for patients are also available to children and young people detained under the Act. Reforms to the Act will limit the scope to detain people with a learning disability or autistic people, helping to reduce unnecessary detentions. To ensure that in-patient settings are therapeutic for autistic people, we are providing £4 million to enable in-patient settings to become more autism friendly In children’s social care, we are committed to doing everything we can to support local authorities in ensuring that the most vulnerable children are protected and that there are sufficient places for children in their care. The Government have given more than £6 billion in un-ringfenced funding directly to councils to support them with the impact of covid-19 spending pressures, including in children’s social services I take the opportunity to refer briefly to the a point made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the House a few days ago. He set out that we will be taking further measures to support and protect social care against the threat posed by the omicron variant. We will set out a package of measures at the earliest opportunity. I reassure hon. Members that the timing of the announcement will not have an impact on our ability to implement those protections on the intended date The Government are also taking additional steps to support local authorities to fulfil their statutory duties. The spending review 2021 announced £259 million over the spending review period to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes. That will provide high-quality safe homes for some of our most vulnerable children and young people We recognise that those in the secure estate are some of the most vulnerable in our society. Children and young people in secure settings are more likely than other young people their age to have additional healthcare needs. The integrated care framework aims to support trauma-informed care, and formulation-driven evidence-based whole-system approaches to creating change for children and young people within the children and young people secure estate My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne talked about beds. In the NHS long-term plan, we committed to investing at least an additional £2.3 billion in mental health services by 2023-24. That will see 345,000 children and young people a year accessing NHS-funded specialist mental health support if they need it. On 5 March, we announced an additional £79 million of funding that will be used to expand children’s mental health services significantly in this financial year. It will also help to improve access and reduce waiting times for NHS community mental health support There is much to be said about how we are supporting and should further support children and young people, not least those who, because of mental illness, learning disabilities, being autistic or complex trauma, are some of the most vulnerable in our society.