Steve Brine has welcomed news that the Government is to invest £143m in improving children's mental health services this year.
The funding is part of £1.25bn which will be allocated to children and adolescents' mental health services, and will cover England, with an additional £30m to be spent helping people tackle eating disorders.
The details are likely to include a guarantee that by 2020, 95% of patients will be seen within four weeks of being referred, with the most urgent cases seen within a week.
In addition, a new report called 'Future in Mind' has been published by The Children and Young People's Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce, which was established to consider ways to make it easier for children, young people, parents and carers to access help and support when needed. It also looks how to improve the way that youth mental health services are organised, commissioned and provided.
Key themes of the report include promoting resilience, prevention and early intervention, improving access to effective support, care for the most vulnerable, accountability and transparency, and developing the workforce.
Steve Brine said: "This is a very important piece of work and something I have championed since entering Parliament in 2010. Mental health has been the Cinderella service of the NHS for too long and this Conservative Government is determined to end that. One of the key recommendations from 'Future in Mind' is a joint collaboration between the Department for Education and NHS England, with Clinical Commissioning Groups linking up with schools to operate a new pilot scheme involving CAMHS. This is very much needed.
"I am in active discussions with local head-teachers who are increasingly concerned at the presentation of anxiety related problems among young people and the pressure that is putting on their core work which is, at the end of the day, to provide children with an education."
Steve Brine, who is Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jeremy Hunt at the Department of Health, recently received a special report on eating disorders written by Winchester based FIXERS.
Pictured; Steve Brine with the FIXERS receiving the Eating Disorders report recently at the House of Commons
More information ...