Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to increase funding allocated to schemes to support children with mental health problems.
Answered by Matt Hancock
Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published by NHS England in 2016, sets out the planned expenditure for additional cash term funding for mental health through to 2020/21.
We are making an additional £1.4 billion available in cash terms in order to transform services, which includes our ambition for an additional 70,000 children and young people a year to receive access to specialist mental health services by 2020/21.
Clinical commissioning group (CCG) spending on children and young people’s mental health increased by 20% from £516 million in 2015/16 to £619 million in 2016/17. The latest refresh of the National Health Service mandate now requires for all CCGs to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard, which requires areas to increase mental health funding by at least the overall growth in their allocation each year. Our joint health and education Green Paper aims to further improve provision of services in schools and colleges, bolster links between schools, colleges and the NHS and pilot a four week waiting time. This is available at the following link:
The Government has announced a new five-year budget settlement for the NHS in June 2018, which will see funding grow on average by 3.4% in real terms each year. This will mean the NHS budget will increase by over £20 billion in real terms by 2023-24 compared with today.
This additional funding will underpin a 10-year plan to guarantee the future of the NHS for the long term. NHS leaders are currently developing the long-term plan and, as such, no decision has yet been taken on the share of funds to be allocated to mental health services for children and young people under the multi-year financial settlement. However, the Government has been clear that significantly improving access to good mental health services is one of the principles it expects to underpin the long-term plan. The plan is currently in development and will be published later in the year.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to enable the provision of additional services in general practice clinics to reduce the workload in accident and emergency departments.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government has committed to improving access to general practice services by March 2019. This includes ensuring there are sufficient routine appointments available at evenings and weekends to meet locally determined demand, alongside effective access to out of hours and urgent care services. This will help to reduce pressures on general practice and the wider system, including accident and emergency attendances. Millions of patients have already benefitted from improved access to general practice services.
Expanded/extended access to general practice is one of the key elements of NHS England’s Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) review. As set out in the Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View, the aim of the UEC review is to make access to urgent and emergency services clearer for patients and to remove the mix of walk-in centres, minor injury units and urgent care centres, in addition to the numerous general practitioner health services and surgeries offering varied levels of core and extended services. To address this, new urgent treatment centres which are community and primary care facilities providing access to urgent treatment for a local population, are being introduced which will standardise this range of options and simplify the system so patients know where to go and have clarity of which services are on offer. NHS England has set out a core set of standards for urgent treatment centres to establish as much commonality as possible.
To support improvements in patient care and access, and facilitate new ways of delivering primary care, investment in general practice has increased by £2.4 billion a year by 2020/2021 from £9.7 billion in 2015/16 to over £12 billion by 2020/21 – a 14% real-terms increase.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent research his Department has commissioned on irritable bowel syndrome; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including irritable bowel syndrome. It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.
Since 2015, the NIHR has continued to fund and support a range of research on irritable bowel syndrome, including four projects totalling approximately £3.8 million, and over 20 studies totalling approximately £557,000. This includes projects and studies with a post-2018 completion date.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department spent on advertising in 2017.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
For the calendar year 1 January to 31 December 2017, the Department spent £123,984 on advertising.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding from the public purse his Department allocated to patient transport in 2017.
Answered by Steve Brine
Neither the Department nor NHS England hold the requested information.
NHS England allocates funding to clinical commissioning croups (CCGs). Individual CCGs are responsible for commissioning local services, such as patient transport services, based on population need.
It is for local leaders working together with NHS England and NHS Improvement, to make the best use of the funding that has been allocated to them.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to raise awareness among expectant mothers of postnatal depression.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home.
This includes upskilling relevant professionals to raise awareness among expectant mothers of postnatal depression. In particular, midwives and health visitors have a role in raising awareness and early identification of mental health concerns.
Overall, the Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has any plans to carry out research on treatments for epilepsy patients.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). The NIHR currently funds seven active projects with a focus on epilepsy, with a total value of £9,914,239. This figure reflects the total amount of funding allocated to each project for its entire duration. In addition, the NIHR provides infrastructure funding (£512,019 for the period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2020) to the Cochrane Epilepsy Group, which undertakes a high number of reviews in this area.
The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including epilepsy. It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.
On 21 June 2018, the NIHR launched a global health research call to fund research in three areas, including epilepsy. This call is funded by the Department’s Official Development Assistance allocation.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to take steps to reduce waiting times for autism assessments for children.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Children should not have to face long waits for an autism diagnosis and we are continuing to work with our partners to help localities address long waiting times for an autism diagnosis.
We have included autism indicators in the Mental Health Services Dataset, with data beginning to be collected from 1 April 2018. The data will include waiting times for an assessment for autism to begin. The current plan is to publish the dataset after a year of data has been collected.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients have received homecare help under the NHS in each of the last three years.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The information requested is not collected centrally.
Asked by: David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to ensure the safety of (a) hospital and (b) ambulance staff on duty.
Answered by Steve Barclay
The Department has commissioned NHS Improvement to work in collaboration with NHS England on new support arrangements required to help all National Health Service organisations including hospital and ambulance trusts in their responsibilities for ensuring their staff are safe from assaults and abuse. The Government is also supporting new legislation being taken through Parliament that will make assaults and abuse of emergency workers across all public services an aggravated offence.