Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether targets are in place for maximum waiting times for diagnosis of children with behavioural disorders such as ADHD.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
There are no such maximum waiting times targets in place.
Guidance published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on the diagnosis and management of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children over three years, young people and adults is intended to improve the diagnosis of ADHD as well as the quality of care and support for people with ADHD. It does not however make recommendations on waiting times.
NHS England has been working with NICE and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health to develop new mental health pathways, including for children and young people. These could benefit people with ADHD and other behavioural disorders who have mental health needs by facilitating better and faster diagnosis. The pathways are currently in draft and are being considered for publication over the coming months.
Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to ensure that the FreeStyle Libre Flash Glucose Monitoring system is accessible to all diabetes patients
Answered by Steve Brine
Freestyle Libre has been approved for reimbursement on National Health Service prescription from 1 November through listing in Part IX of the Drug Tariff. The Drug Tariff is a price list that covers England and Wales, and the listing of a medical device in the Tariff should not be interpreted as a recommendation to prescribe a particular product. Patients will need to discuss the ongoing management of their condition with their healthcare professional and consider whether flash glucose monitoring is suitable for them.
Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to ensure that health care professionals report cases of female genital mutilation.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
To support National Health Service staff to deliver their legal obligations under the female genital mutilation (FGM) mandatory reporting duty and to support them in their work, the Department’s FGM Prevention Programme partnered with NHS England launched a package of health-specific materials for NHS organisations to support them in implementing the duty. The materials were developed with stakeholders and NHS England and contain guidance, posters, slideshows for training sessions, video interviews with professionals, a flow-chart, and an information leaflet for patients and their families.
These materials support healthcare professionals to carry out their duties by providing guidance on what healthcare professionals should do if they think a child has had or is at risk of FGM, guidance for confirming ‘known’ cases of FGM in under 18-year-olds, explanations of what the duty means for healthcare professionals, health training packages to introduce the duty as well as materials to explain the duty to patients and families affected by FGM.
Where professionals fail to comply with the duty, this should be dealt with in accordance with professional bodies’ existing disciplinary procedures on a case by case basis.
Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps he has taken to ensure that data on cases of FGM are collected and made public.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department’s Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Prevention Programme with NHS England introduced the first ever FGM data collection across the National Health Service, published quarterly by NHS Digital as an official statistic on the NHS Digital website.
The data is collected by healthcare providers in England including acute hospital providers, mental health providers and general practitioner practices. It mandates clinicians to record patient demographic data, specific FGM information, referral and treatment information.
The information is being collected to gain a clearer national picture of the prevalence of FGM and to deepen the health sector’s understanding of the practice. It is also used to inform how NHS England and other sectors provide services for women and girls with FGM, and to indicate national trends.
To improve rates of compliance with the enhanced dataset, NHS Digital analyse the reports to follow up with trusts who are not submitting data, to improve the completeness of the collection. NHS Digital also issued a Data Provision Notice on 25 November under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to communicate more clearly the requirement to comply with the dataset and set out its benefits. In addition, we continue to work with the Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, the British Medical Association and others to further improve compliance.
Asked by: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to identify at an early stage new mothers who may be experiencing mental health problems.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Promoting good maternal and perinatal mental health is a key priority for this Government, as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.
The Department is investing £365 million between 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.
A key element of the transformation programme is to increase awareness and skills across the workforce, supporting better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and consequently improved recovery rates.
In addition, the Department has published guidance which has led to the creation of over 570 perinatal mental health visitor champions. Their role is to support health visitors with the identification and management of anxiety, mild to moderate depression and other perinatal mental disorders, and to know when to refer on to a specialist.