Asked by: Baroness Hollins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that every acute hospital employs a learning disability liaison nurse.
Answered by Earl Howe - Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
The Equality Act 2010 exists to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. All National Health Service providers including acute hospitals have a duty to promote disability equality.
The requirement for acute hospitals to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for people with learning disabilities is normally included in commissioner contracts and compliance measured as part of the contract management role/process. Trusts are held to account through this mechanism.
Learning Disability Liaison Nurses are proven to improve the quality of services for people with learning disabilities in acute hospitals, and are an important way of demonstrating compliance with the requirement.
The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) approach to inspecting trusts ensures that the trust has made appropriate adjustments to meet the needs of service users, as outlined in the Key Line Of Enquiry for ‘Responsive’ in the appendix to the acute hospital handbook, available on the CQC’s website. Appropriate adjustments specifically include provision for the care of patients with learning disabilities.
The Government’s Mandate to NHS England sets out our ambitions for the health service, which include an objective that NHS England ensures clinical commissioning groups work with local authorities to ensure that vulnerable people, particularly those with learning disabilities and autism, receive safe, appropriate, high quality care. NHS England sets out how it will achieve the objectives in the Mandate in its 2014-15 – 2016-17 business plan. The Government will hold NHS England to account for its achievement.
Asked by: Baroness Hollins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made to eliminate the use of police cells as a place of safety for children and adults experiencing a mental health crisis.
Answered by Earl Howe - Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
The Government is taking action to prevent the inappropriate use of police cells as a place of safety under the Mental Health Act 1983.
The Government has an ambition to reduce this practice by 50% this year – and to see how police and health colleagues can work together so that it does not happen at all to children and young people.
Last year the number of people taken to police cells as places of safety fell significantly, from 8,667 in 2011-12 to 6,028 in 2013-14. The police have told us that between the six months of April and September this year there have been 2,282 such cases – which, if maintained over the rest of the year, would result in a further 24% decrease in use of cells over last year. At the same time the use of health-based places of safety increased by 3,019 uses between 2012-13 and 2013-14.
This puts us well on track to achieve our aim of reducing the 2011-12 figure of 8,667 uses of police cells by half in 2014-15.
There was a small reduction of 10% in the numbers of children who were taken to a police cell as a place of safety – for 2013-14 this happened in 236 cases, and for 2012-13 this happened in 263 cases.
In February, we published a Crisis Care Concordat to make sure people in crisis get the help they need. All localities are working together to complete local crisis declarations agreed by all the local relevant agencies, by the end of the year.
The concordat states a clear expectation that “police custody is never used as a place of safety” for under-18s, except in very exceptional circumstances where a police officer makes the decision that immediate safety of a child or young person requires it.
In conjunction with the Home Office, the Department of Health has conducted a review of Section 135 and Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. This was published on 18 December 2014.
The new Children and Young People's Mental Health and Well-Being Taskforce will also be looking at the issue of under 18s being detained in police custody as part of its Access and Prevention work.
Asked by: Baroness Hollins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that people experiencing mental health problems, including those with an additional learning disability, do not have to wait for longer than 18 weeks to receive appropriate treatment.
Answered by Earl Howe - Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Lords
Mental health and well-being is a priority for this Government. We have legislated for parity of esteem between mental and physical health and included it in our Mandate to NHS England. This makes it clear that “everyone who needs it should have timely access to evidence-based services”. This will involve extending and ensuring more open access to programmes.
In our new five-year plan for mental health, Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services by 2020, we identified £40 million additional spending this year and freed up a further £80 million for 2015-16. This will, for the first time ever, enable the setting of access and waiting time standards in mental health services, including for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities. The standards will include:
- treatment within six weeks for 75% of people referred to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, with 95% of people being treated within 18 weeks;
- treatment within two weeks for more than 50% of people experiencing a first episode of psychosis; and
- £30 million targeted investment will help people in crisis to access effective support in accident and emergency.
Starting this year, the Department and NHS England will work together with mental health system partners to develop detailed proposals for the introduction of further access and waiting time standards from 2016 onwards.
Asked by: Baroness Hollins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to ensure that people with learning disabilities are not excluded from NHS England's five-year strategic plan for National Health Service commissioners to improve quality of and access to health care, outlined in Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2014/15–2018/19.
Answered by Earl Baldwin of Bewdley
The Government's Mandate to NHS England, sets out our ambitions for the health service, which include an objective that NHS England ensures clinical commissioning groups work with local authorities to ensure that vulnerable people, particularly those with learning disabilities and autism, receive safe, appropriate, high quality care. NHS England sets out how it will achieve the objectives in the Mandate in its 2014-15 – 2016-17 business plan. The Government will hold NHS England to account for its achievement.
Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2014/15 to 2018/19sets out a framework within which commissioners will need to work with providers and partners in local government to develop five year plans to secure the continuity of sustainable high quality care for all. Building on Everyone Counts, NHS England is beginning a programme of work to consider how to improve quality of and access to health care for people with learning disabilities. Within the framework there is specific reference to Transforming Care: A national response to Winterbourne View Hospital. This is a non-negotiable item that NHS England expects to be part of every relationship between commissioners and providers. As part of this, clinical commissioning groups, local authorities and specialised commissioners should work together to implement the core specification which describes the core principles that must be present in all education, health and social care services for children, young people, adults and older people with learning disabilities and/or autism who either display, or are at risk of displaying, behaviour that challenges.
NHS England is committed to work to reduce premature mortality amongst people with learning disability, including actions in response to the Confidential Inquiry into Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities.