Mental Health Services: Access In Custody To Be Improved

Extra cash has been found to give young people in custody better access to specialist mental health professionals. The £1.5m is backed up by guidance for health and social care commissioners and will help standardise patchy provision for young offenders with severe mental health problems.

The Department of Health funds aim to encourage better coordination between local child and adolescent mental health services to ensure young offenders, a third of whom have mental health problems, get the right care.

Caroline Twitchett, programme lead for children and young people’s prison health at the Department of Health, said: “The factors affecting offending and anti-social behaviour are complex. This significant boost to funding will help us address one part of that puzzle.”