Emergency Hospital Admissions

Lord McColl of Dulwich Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

It is now the case that thousands of GPs and hospital staff have been trained to screen for the signs of alcohol abuse and to provide intervention. So not only are there dedicated staff and dedicated public health programmes, but hospital and primary care staff have now been specifically trained to look for the signs and to signpost people to care when they need it.

[Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that one of the causes of the recent pressure on acute hospital beds is that young people and children who are waiting for scarce specialist mental health beds are frequently put into inappropriate adult wards because there is no room for them anywhere else? Would the Minister look into that again?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I thank my noble friend for making that point. Unfortunately, we have a growing prevalence of the kind of mental illness he is describing. We are in the process of increasing the number of in-patient beds available for young people going through those kinds of episodes. That is the right thing to do. It means that they will not have to travel so far from their homes and has the benefit of relieving the impact on adult acute beds.