PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Mental Health Services (23 April 2019)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department used to decide which Care Commissioning Groups would be included in the pilots for the new mental health support teams.

Asked by:
Alison McGovern (Labour)

The decision over where Mental Health Support Teams are sited is for local determination, based on criteria agreed between the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Department for Education. For the 2018-19 trailblazers, four essential criteria were used to help identify potential clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to be part of initial implementation, in order to ensure that sites would be able to mobilise within the tight timescales for that year and provide essential learning for subsequent waves:

- Delivery of the Mental Health Investment Standard in 2017-18;

- Data flowing to the Mental Health Services Dataset from the providers commissioned by CCGs to demonstrate access level above 20% of the population of children and young people;

- That the CCG is not in special measures and that the main provider of children and young people’s mental health services is not rated inadequate; and

- Proximity to a training site – within one hour by public transport or car.

Answered by:
Dame Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative)
29 April 2019