Recommendation 19

The Department for Education also spoke about an NHS England consultation, which closed early in 2022, on introducing waiting time standards for community and A&E mental health care.48 The new standards would comprise a 24-hour standard for urgent community mental health care, a four-week standard for children and young people who need non-urgent community mental health care, and a standard of one hour for people arriving in A&E and needing a mental health assessment. The Department for Education described the setting of the standards as “important” as they would provide a “yardstick” for measuring performance. It said that people had welcomed the potential setting of the standards but had reported that meeting them would be a challenge.49 Youth justice