Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support people with eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Under the NHS Long Term Plan, the Government has earmarked additional funding to bolster existing mental health services, including eating disorder services, until 2024. Since 2016, investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services has risen every year, with an extra £54 million per year from 2023/24. This extra funding continues to enhance the capacity of community eating disorder teams across the country. We expect integrated care boards to continue to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard so that investment in mental health services increases in line with their overall increase in allocation for that year.
NHS England continues to work with system leaders and regions and to ask that areas prioritise service delivery and investment to meet the needs of these vulnerable young people to help ensure funding flows to these services as intended. To support this, NHS England is refreshing guidance on children and young people's eating disorders, including to increase the focus on early identification and intervention. Updated guidance will highlight the importance of improved integration between dedicated community eating disorder services, wider children and young people's mental health services, schools, colleges and primary care to improve awareness, provide expert advice and improve support for children and young people presenting with problems with eating, whilst ensuring swift access to specialist support as soon as an eating disorder is suspected.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department provides to people who (a) fall ill and (b) have an accident and are a primary carer for a vulnerable child.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Act 2014 requires local authorities to deliver a wide range of sustainable high-quality care and support services, including support for unpaid carers. Local authorities are required to undertake a Carer’s Assessment for any unpaid carer who appears to have a need for support and to meet their eligible needs on request from the carer.
Under the Children Act 1989 and Children and Families’ Act 2014 local authorities are required to assess and support the needs of parents of and carers for children as well as those with Special Educational Needs or a disability. Since April 2015, every young carer is also entitled to an assessment to ensure they get the support they need.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of support provided to people who give up employment to become home carers.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No recent assessment has been made of the adequacy of support for people who give up employment to become home carers. Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are required to undertake a Carer’s Assessment for any unpaid carer who appears to have a need for support and to meet their eligible needs on request from the carer.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure women receive timely breast cancer screenings.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Department recognises the importance of timely breast screening, to support this we has invested £10 million for breast screening units to deliver 28 new breast screening units and nearly 60 life-saving upgrades to services, so more women can be checked for signs of cancer, speeding up diagnosis and treatment. We are restoring the NHS Breast Screening programme to pre-pandemic levels continues. The majority of services removed their backlogs of invitations by the end of December 2022, with the remaining services being monitored and supported nationally and regionally. In addition, steps are being taken to remove barriers to attending breast cancer screening such as promoting the use of text message alerts to remind women of upcoming appointments and the roll out local and national media campaigns.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to tackle (a) domestic and (b) global antibiotics shortages.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department’s focus is on helping to ensure continuity of supply of medicines, including antibiotics, for United Kingdom patients. We use a range of tools and follow well-established processes to manage and mitigate medicine supply issues, working closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the pharmaceutical industry, NHS England, Devolved Governments and others operating in the supply chain, to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when they do arise.
The recent supply issues affecting antibiotics used to treat Strep A appear to be improving, as decisive action has been taken to boost supply and demand has reduced. We are continuing to work with manufacturers and wholesalers to ensure that they expedite deliveries, bring forward stock they have to make sure it gets to where it is needed, and boost supply to meet demand. We have issued eight Serious Shortage Protocols to allow pharmacists to supply an alternative form of penicillin V, or alternative antibiotic, to make things easier for them, patients, and general practitioners.
We understand from our engagement with industry and other stakeholders that other countries have also experienced supply issues with antibiotics over recent months. We are working with our global partners, to share information and intelligence and and work together to address those issues.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department is providing to occupational therapists who did not receive an NHS Bursary.
Answered by Will Quince
In 2017, healthcare students were moved onto the standard student finance system. Students were eligible for tuition fee loans, maintenance loans and further grants and support. This allowed them to access more living costs support whilst studying compared to the previous system. Repayments are unlike commercial loans, with built-in unique protections for borrowers.
Since 2020, eligible healthcare students have had access to non-repayable grants worth £5,000 per academic year. Students can also access a further £1,000 for certain specialist subjects, £2,000 for childcare, plus additional funding for travel and accommodation costs, as well as access to a hardship fund.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps he has taken with Cabinet colleagues to help support student nurses.
Answered by Will Quince
The Student Loans Company provides the primary funding support package for students in further education. Student loan repayments are unlike commercial loans, with built-in protections, including repayments linked to income and not based on interest rates or the amount borrowed, and with outstanding loan amounts written off after 30 years. Student loans are subsidised by the taxpayer, this is a conscious investment in the skills and people of this country.
In addition to this, eligible nursing students have access to supplementary funding support via the NHS Learning Support Fund, which offers a non-repayable grant of £5,000 per academic year plus additional grants and supports depending on their circumstances.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help improve staff retention in the NHS.
Answered by Will Quince
Retention within the National Health Service is a complex issue and decisions to leave are taken for a multitude of factors.
The NHS People Plan and the People Promise focus on improving the retention of NHS staff by prioritising staff health and wellbeing. We have set out a comprehensive range of actions to improve staff retention which focuses on creating a more modern, compassionate and inclusive NHS culture by strengthening health and wellbeing, equality and diversity, culture and leadership and flexible working.
Building on this work, the NHS Retention Programme seeks to understand why staff leave, resulting in targeted interventions to support staff to stay whilst keeping them well. To bolster current support, each NHS organisation is prioritising the delivery of five high impact actions that will impact on early career, experience at work, and late career staff, improving the experience and retention of nursing and midwifery staff.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to encourage young adults to work for the NHS.
Answered by Will Quince
The National Health Service has launched its fifth consecutive national recruitment campaign ‘We are the NHS’ to inspire people to consider a career in healthcare and increase applications for healthcare courses. Healthcare students are able to apply for a range of financial support to help them through their studies. For example, eligible nursing, midwifery and allied health professional students can access a non-repayable training grant of at least £5,000 per academic year.
The Government continues to widen access to NHS careers through blended learning and apprenticeship routes, including the recently announced Medical Doctor Apprenticeship.
There were around 20,900 new NHS apprenticeships starts in 2021/22, this makes the NHS the largest employer of apprentices in the public sector by number of starts.
Asked by: Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has he made of the potential merits of expanding the use of medical cannabis.
Answered by Will Quince
No assessment has been made. Licensed cannabis-based medicines are routinely available on the National Health Service, however, clinical guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence demonstrate a clear need for more evidence to support routine prescribing and funding decisions for unlicensed cannabis based products for medicinal use in humans. Until that evidence base is built, prescribers will remain reticent to prescribe and no decision can be made by the NHS on routine funding.
We continue to call on manufacturers to conduct research and we are working with regulatory, research and NHS partners to establish clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of these products.