Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they are giving to identifying new sources of income to meet increasing care costs, especially in the light of the projected growth in the number of people over the age of 75 within the next five years.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
Social care continues to be a key priority for this Government. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has announced that local authorities will have access to £900 million of additional funding for social care over the next two years, including £240 million through the Adult Social Care Support Grant, funded by reforms to the New Homes Bonus, and additional flexibility for local authorities to raise money through the social care precept.
From April 2017, additional social care funds will be made available to local government through the Better Care Fund, rising to £1.5 billion by 2019/20, with funding going direct to councils to ensure health and social care services work together to support older and vulnerable people.
The Government recognises that there needs to be reform in the medium and long term to encourage high standards across the whole country. We will put social care on a sustainable footing for the future, giving people the comfort of knowing that they will be cared for in their old age.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of private care homes likely to close during 2017 due to local authorities not being able to pay fees; and what alternative provision will be made to accommodate displaced elderly and infirm residents in order to avoid increased demands for hospital bed spaces.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
The Department continues to work with the Care Quality Commission to monitor care home capacity and although there is inevitable churn, we have not seen a significant decline in care home beds.
The Government understands concerns about the pressures in the market. Although local government finances remain tight, Government has provided local authorities access to up to £7.6 billion of new support for social care by 2019/20, so they can increase social care spending in real terms by the end of the Parliament.
The Care Act (2014) placed duties on local authorities making them responsible for ensuring there is an effective pool of quality providers of social care in their area with capacity to meet the needs of their local population. The Department is supporting local authorities to influence their local market through improved market facilitation and commissioning to ensure that local markets are effective.
The Department has worked with Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, Local Government Association, the care sector and other partners to produce a wide range of guidance and support about market shaping and commissioning. We have brought this together in an online hub called Adult Social Care Market Shaping which is an online only resource widely available to people and organisations including local authorities, service users, and care providers.
The Department continues to monitor capacity and effectiveness of the market.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportions of black and minority ethnic (BME) (1) staff, and (2) patients, there are in mental health hospital psychiatric settings; and what assessment they have made of the extent to which BME patients in such settings are afforded access to equal and fair treatment.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
This information is not held centrally.
NHS England is working with the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and a range of multi-agency experts, to improve acute mental health care through an evidence-based treatment pathway with accompanying commissioning support tools for, planned for completion within 2016-17. Partners are committed to ensuring the work effectively addresses inequalities for people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, and a BME reference group comprising individuals with lived experience of using services has been established to provide advice and steer throughout the pathway development process. Following publication of the pathway, implementation will be monitored with particular consideration given to its impact on reducing health inequalities.
NHS England has undertaken an independent patient and service level audit of low and medium secure care services in England (2015 data). An analysis of the data shows that Black and Black British men are uniquely over-represented four-fold (six-fold in London) in secure care mental health services, and experience longer stays in restrictive settings.
NHS England is embarking on a new Secure Care Pathways transformation programme. The aim will be to prevent avoidable admissions to restrictive care by providing support earlier, closer to home, and to support people in their longer term recovery when they are ready to leave secure services. This programme is prioritising the experiences and needs of Black men with mental illness and risk and safety issues in the community. NHS England will undertake targeted engagement with Black men in secure mental health settings, and will co-design with experts by experience, carers, clinicians and providers a community-based Forensic Outreach and Liaison Service, which is particularly accessible and effective for this currently underserved group.
NHS trusts produced and published their first Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) baseline data on 1 July 2015 and the first WRES report NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard – 2015 Data Analysis Report for NHS Trusts, which provides analysis and an overview of data returns by individual trusts, was published in June 2016. A copy of this is attached.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the expectations of the Care Quality Commission in making publicly available information about the ethnic backgrounds of those patients in locked psychiatric wards who are involved in incidents with attending armed police officers.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) does not have a statutory role in monitoring the extent of the presence of police at mental health hospitals, or the ethnic backgrounds of those patients in locked psychiatric wards who are involved in incidents with attending armed police officers.
Under the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009, independent sector mental health establishments who are registered with the CQC are required to report, without delay, to the CQC any incident which is reported to or investigated by the police.
Where a patient experiences serious harm or dies as the result of an incident which involved police attending the hospital, National Health Service providers are expected to report such incidents to the National Reporting and Learning System, and independent hospitals to the CQC.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of monitoring by the Care Quality Commission of the extent of the presence of police at mental health hospital psychiatric settings.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) does not have a statutory role in monitoring the extent of the presence of police at mental health hospitals, or the ethnic backgrounds of those patients in locked psychiatric wards who are involved in incidents with attending armed police officers.
Under the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009, independent sector mental health establishments who are registered with the CQC are required to report, without delay, to the CQC any incident which is reported to or investigated by the police.
Where a patient experiences serious harm or dies as the result of an incident which involved police attending the hospital, National Health Service providers are expected to report such incidents to the National Reporting and Learning System, and independent hospitals to the CQC.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of continuing care home closures, what plans are in place to meet the care needs of the growing elderly population.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
The Department has not seen loss of capacity of social care provision. The Government recognises that the care sector is operating in a challenging financial environment and continues to engage with the care sector to understand their concerns about their financial viability and the sustainability of services.
The Care Quality Commission monitors the finances of the largest care businesses to identify likely insolvencies that would stop services. The Department continues to monitor the whole of the market of care providers, engage with the sector to better understand the challenges they face and support local authorities who purchase services.
The Department is working closely with the Local Government Association to consider targeted action to address the issues.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether additional resources allocated for mental health services are ring-fenced in order to prevent any of those resources being used for alternative services in order to offset any NHS spending constraints.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
NHS England is responsible for allocating funding resources for health services including mental health. The Government has committed to an additional £1 billion by 2020/21 to support the implementation of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health. This is in addition to the £1.4 billion over five years to improve children and young people’s mental health announced in 2014/15. We are holding NHS England to account through the NHS Mandate to ensure this investment delivers improvements in mental health.
We will continue to work with NHS England and other arm’s length bodies to monitor and track progress against the mental health commitments of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health and Future in Mind.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the cost of bed-blocking in NHS hospitals in each of the past three years and what plans they have to invest in social care services to reduce those costs.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
To date, the Department has made no formal estimate of the costs of delayed discharge to the National Health Service. However, the Department and NHS Improvement are working together to implement Lord Carter’s recommendations on hospital productivity. As part of this, the two organisations are working with providers to develop a richer dataset around all aspects of the patient pathway, including estimates of the cost of delayed discharge.
At the same time, the Department continues to work closely with the NHS and local government to help local areas improve transfers out of hospital, share best practice, and reduce unnecessary delays. We are funding the NHS’s own plan for the future with £10 billion and we are giving local authorities access to up to £3.5 billion of new support for adult social care by 2019/20.
Since April 2015, the Government’s £5.3 billion Better Care Fund has provided much needed investment in better integrated care through locally developed plans and by putting resources where the local NHS and social services think they are needed. Alongside this we are working with local areas to improve the transfer of patients back into the communities.
In 2016-17, there is a new Better Care Fund requirement on local areas to develop a clear, focused action plan for managing delays, including locally agreed targets. The requirement is designed to reduce delays across the health and care system.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether elderly and disabled patents are being discharged from hospitals without adequate on-going care arrangements in place in order to free up beds for other hospital admissions.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
No patient with on-going care and support needs should be discharged from hospital without appropriate arrangements for meeting those needs being put in place. We expect the National Health Service and local authorities to work together to ensure that patient safety and social care needs are taken into account when decisions are made to discharge patients from hospital.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the shortfall in resources available to enable elderly and disabled patients to be discharged from hospitals with adequate provision in place for their appropriate care at home or elsewhere.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
No-one should stay in hospital any longer than they need to and this Government is determined to ensure that health and social care are properly funded. As well as funding the National Health Service’s own plan for the future with £10 billion, we are giving local authorities access to up to £3.5 billion extra for adult social care by 2019/2020 through the new Social Care Precept and additional social care funding in the Better Care Fund.