Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether there are any urgent funding pools available for mental health charities facing imminent closure.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information requested is not held centrally. However, the Charity Commission provides guidance for charities on managing finances, including potential insolvency, which is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/managing-financial-difficulties-insolvency-in-charities-cc12/managing-financial-difficulties-insolvency-in-charities#dealing-with-potential-insolvency
Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
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 help reduce unexpected deaths as a result of epilepsy.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence issues guidance for healthcare professionals and commissioners and the NHS RightCare Epilepsy Toolkit provides expert advice on improving support for people living with epilepsy. The New Medicine Service allows an expanded role for pharmacies in supporting those with epilepsy and other conditions, including potential harms caused by non-adherence to medicines.
Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to increase the number of hospital beds for psychiatric care in Cornwall.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board is supporting Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to optimise the use of current bed capacity and re-open those beds which are not operational.
Local commissioners work in collaboration with service providers to expand and enhance community and crisis alternatives to reduce the number of people requiring an inpatient treatment and provide earlier intervention and prevention locally.
Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress he has made on implementing the Adult Social Care Discharge Fund.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
As announced on 16 November 2022, the Adult Social Care Discharge Fund will be distributed to integrated care boards and local authorities in two tranches. The first will be distributed in December 2022 and the second in January 2023. Details of these allocations is available at the following link:
Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
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 reduce waiting times on and increase the capacity of the national dental helpline number.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
In order to ensure patients are given appropriate advice and support, the NHS 111 service uses a nationally agreed clinical algorithm which can refer patients to the most appropriate service to meet their needs, for example, a dental practice or urgent treatment centre.
Additional urgent care provision is commissioned locally and NHS England works across each region to ensure these local services are accessible via NHS 111. This allows patients to be directed to a wider range of services in their area where these are available.
Increasing the NHS 111 call handling provision ahead of winter continues, with recruitment and training of staff to meet the growing demands on the service as a whole.
Asked by: Cherilyn Mackrory (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress she has made on the review of NHS dental contracts.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department worked with NHS England and negotiated with the British Dental Association on improvements to the National Health Service dental system which was announced on 19 July 2022. These improvements are supported by the sector and will improve access, target care for patients with higher oral health needs and ensure that dentists are more fairly rewarded for delivering NHS care, making NHS dentistry a more attractive place to work for dentists and their teams.
It also includes improving the 2006 contract to ensure better remuneration for practices for providing complex treatment to patients, issuing guidance on how often patients should expect to attend for check-ups and enabling dentists to make better use of staff in dental teams to deliver NHS treatment. This will also enable greater flexibility for NHS commissioners in commissioning dentists to deliver more treatment where needed and make it a requirement for dentists to update practice information on NHS.UK. We have commenced the next phase of reforms which will focus on urgent care, funding models and terms and conditions.