Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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1380. To ask the Minister for Health the status of each of the recommendations of the national youth mental health task force [20661/20]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The National Youth Mental Health Task Force was established in response to an undertaking in the Programme for Partnership Government. The Task Force report was published in December 2017 and it was suggested that the time-frame for full implementation should be three years. The report made recommendations in 10 different themed areas. It also identified lead agencies associated with each recommendation that would be tasked with developing and/or implementing these as appropriate.

Since publication of the Task Force report, a number of the recommendations have been incorporated into the service plans of lead agencies for 2018/2020. The implementation of these recommendations has been ongoing since publication of the report and many major areas of priority have been delivered. In this regard, there have been several online support projects delivered to support online counselling, online CBT training and online signposting; Schools have upskilled staff in mental health training and many disciplines have availed of mental health first aid training; Early intervention projects such as perinatal training and family support projects have launched. Health and wellbeing projects have been supported and many NGOs have been supported to deliver local youth-specific mental health initiatives nationally through mental health funding, Sláintecare funding and Healthy Ireland community funding. In addition, the HEAI committed to establishing additional counselling supports to higher level students and the Department of Children worked to deliver first five and LGBTQ+ actions.

A small number of recommendations require further consideration and related to this, approval is currently being sought from DPER to establish a Pathfinder inter-departmental unit on youth mental health. In addition ’Sharing the Vision – a Mental Health Policy for Everyone’ advocates that access to mental health supports be based on individual need. This means that care plans should consider the needs of the whole individual regardless of age, gender or socio-economic profile. Sharing the Vision emphasises the need for establishing a National Implementation and Monitoring committee to ensure that all policy recommendations are implemented within the timeframe provided in the framework. This will ensure that young people’s needs remain prioritised over the lifetime of the policy, taking over from where the Youth Mental Health Task Force Report ends.