Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will issue guidance on whether the winter pressures on the NHS will be taken into account in the development of sustainable transformation plans.
Answered by David Mowat
The National Health Service faces higher demand every winter, and its staff are experienced in advance planning to meet the challenges this brings.
With Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs), the NHS and local authorities have come together to develop proposals for health and care in their area over the next few years, helping them to tackle growing demand. With services feeling the strain, collaboration between organisations will give doctors, nurses and care staff the best chance of success.
STPs are based on local knowledge about the priorities in each part of the country, including those relating to local winter pressure. Each was asked to tackle strategic challenges and to make progress on national priorities, including the Urgent and Emergency Care Review chaired by Sir Bruce Keogh.
To help with this, local STP leaders received practical guides from NHS England and NHS Improvement describing what success in 2020 would look like and giving suggestions about how they could approach implementation. These included subjects relevant to winter pressures like urgent and emergency care.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that frail or elderly people are not disproportionately affected by winter pressures on accident and emergency services.
Answered by David Mowat
We recognise that the frail and elderly are particularly vulnerable during this time of year and we are determined to ensure that the National Health Service is focused on delivering for these patients.
Under the seasonal flu immunisation programme, the flu vaccine is offered to everyone over the age of 65 to help them keep well during the winter. Already over 69% of people aged over 65 have received the flu vaccination.
In October 2016, NHS England and Public Health England launched ‘Stay Well This Winter’, a major prevention and advice campaign to encourage people to stay well over winter and access the most appropriate services at the right time.
In addition, the establishment of the Better Care Fund (BCF), to better manage care for the elderly and those with complex health and care needs, will help join up health and care services to improve care and reduce accident and emergency admissions. In 2016/17, the BCF has increased to a mandated minimum of £3.9 billion and local areas have pooled more, taking the total to approaching £6 billion.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions Ministers of his Department have had with their Ministerial counterparts at the Department for Education on how schools and child and adolescent mental health services can work more closely together.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Department of Health and Department for Education are working closely together to deliver the vision set out in Future in Mind, published jointly by both Departments, to improve children and young people’s mental health. This includes work with NHS England in 2015-16 on a £3 million pilot to provide joint training to schools and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) staff and to test how having single points of contact in both schools and CAMHS can improve referrals to specialist services
The Prime Minister announced on 9 January that later this year the Departments will jointly produce a Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health and that we will support schools and the National Health Service in developing closer working by evaluating models and approaches, to explore the impact closer working can have.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that there is a sufficient number of providers to deliver end-point assessments for apprentices.
Answered by Robert Halfon
All end-point assessments must be carried out by an Independent Assessment Organisation on the Skills Funding Agency’s Register of Apprentice Assessment Organisations to ensure high quality assessment.
The assessment market has been adjusting rapidly for most new apprenticeship standards. 82% of all apprentice starts on standards have an end-point assessment organisation available to them, whether they are close to needing end-point assessment or not. This figure rises to 96% for apprentices likely to require an end-point assessment in 2017. There are a small number of standards that already have starts but where an Assessment Organisation has not yet been confirmed. Here, we are taking proactive action to resolve this and ensure there is end-point assessment provision by the time the apprentice completes their apprenticeship. This includes actively working with trailblazer groups and potential assessment organisations to fill gaps in provision and put contingencies in place.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to encourage businesses to follow Department of Health guidance for employers on workplace adjustments for mental health conditions to promote mental health well-being among employees.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
Access to Work has a Mental Health Support Service (MHSS) to assist those who are experiencing mental health difficulties which are affecting them at work, and those with a pre-existing mental health condition who have a job start date. We are currently consulting, through the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper, Improving Lives, to better understand how we can assist employers with their role of creating wellbeing in the workplace.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps is he is taking to ensure full access to the workplace for people with ongoing mental health conditions.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper ‘Improving Lives’, published in October 2016, sets out our intention to remove the long-standing injustices and barriers that stop disabled people and people with health conditions, including ongoing mental health conditions, from getting into work and getting on. We are also determined to bring a new focus to efforts to prevent health conditions from developing and worsening, helping more people to remain in work for longer. This includes putting mental and physical health on an equal footing, to ensure people get the right care and prevent mental illness in the first place.
To make early progress we are significantly improving our employment support. For example, expanding the number of employment advisers and introducing a new Personal Support Package offering tailored employment support. We are working with health partners to embed evidence into clinical practice and support training and education across the NHS workforce. We are also investing £115 million of funding to develop new models of support to help people into work when they are managing a long-term health condition or disability. We will identify and rapidly scale those which can make a difference, while weeding out less promising approaches.
In her speech on the 9th January the Prime Minister announced that more will be done to support mental wellbeing in the workplace. Lord Stevenson, who has campaigned on these issues for many years, and Paul Farmer, CEO of Mind and Chair of the NHS Mental Health Taskforce, have been commissioned to work with leading employers and mental health groups to create a new partnership with industry and, review how best to ensure employees with mental health problems are enabled to thrive in the workplace and perform at their best and make prevention and breaking the stigma top priorities for employers. The Prime Minister also announced a review of employment discrimination laws against people with mental health conditions in the workplace for employees with mental health problems to ensure they are properly supported.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many mental health experts are employed in frontline services in job centres to embed the link between employment and mental health.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
Jobcentre Plus work coaches receive a range of training so that they can help disabled people and people with health conditions, including those with mental health conditions. This includes undertaking accredited learning to improve their understanding of physical and mental health conditions so that they understand their needs and the barriers to work they face. Work coaches also access specialist support in their local area every day to ensure they can offer the right help and support.
We want to do even more, and so we have announced additional Disability Employment Advisers, new Community Partners and additional mental health training and specialist advice pilots to further enhance the work coach role. In addition, ‘Improving Lives’, the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper published in October 2016, reflects a new approach to work, health and disability. It includes consulting on what else we could do to support work coaches working with disabled people and people with health conditions including those with mental health conditions.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of potential changes in the level of support for families where children or young people suffer from vision impairment or sight loss so that they can receive habilitation services.
Answered by David Mowat
The Children and Families Act 2014 requires local authorities to work with children and young people with special educational needs and disability (SEND), including those with visual impairment, and their parents to develop a Local Offer of the services they have or expect to be available. It is for local authorities, in consultation with children and young people with SEND and their families, to decide which services they offer in their area, which can include habilitation training.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to enable parents and guardians to ensure children access age-appropriate materials on the internet.
Answered by Matt Hancock
We are introducing legislation through the Digital Economy Bill to require that pornographic material must not be made available online on a commercial basis without age verification, to restrict its access to under 18s.
Government works with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety to keep children and young people safe online. Bringing together industry, law enforcement, academia, charities and parenting groups, UKCCIS encourages good practice. It was a driving force in bringing in Family Friendly Filters, and has recently produced guidance for schools on sexting.
Government also works directly with the ISPs and social media companies to help protect children online.
Asked by: Karen Lumley (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with non-governmental organisations on children's access to pornographic material.
Answered by Matt Hancock
My Department has had discussions with a variety of non-governmental organisations on children's access to online pornographic material including charities and support groups, IT sector, regulators, payments companies and advertisers, pornography providers and the tech industry.