Asked by: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)
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 ensure that his Department will meet its target under Transforming Care on time.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The objective of the Transforming Care programme, as set out in ‘Building the Right Support’, was to reduce the number of people with learning disability and/or autism who were mental health inpatients by 35-50% by the end of March 2019 (compared to a 2015 baseline). So far, there has been just over a 20% reduction.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits to achieve at least a 50% reduction in inpatients (compared to the 2015 baseline) by the end of 2023/24. NHS England is committed to achieving a 35% reduction during 2019/20. This is set out in the NHS Planning Guidance, which for clinical commissioning groups and specialised commissioning requires a reduction in reliance on inpatient care to 18.5 inpatients per million adult population by March 2020.
The Department will hold NHS England and other delivery partners to account on achieving this.
Asked by: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the 2018 finding of the National Autistic Society that half of autistic people report not leaving the house because they are worried about society's reaction to them, what steps the Government is taking to increase awareness of autism.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government is committed to raising awareness and understanding of autism in line with the autism strategy and Autism Act (2009). On 21 March 2019, I responded to the backbench business debate on autism services on behalf of the Government. This debate has helped to raise awareness and understanding of autism ahead of Autism Awareness Week 2019.
On 13 February 2019, the Department launched an eight-week consultation on learning disability and autism training for health and care staff. We are consulting on proposals for introducing mandatory learning disability and autism training to ensure that staff across health and social care have the right skills and we have overall the right culture, to provide better support. The consultation is available at the following link:
Government Departments are taking forward actions and strategies to raise awareness and understanding of autism, and to adjust services to make them more accessible to autistic people. For example, these include:
- In July 2018, the Department for Transport published its, ‘Inclusive Transport Strategy: Achieving Equal Access for Disabled People.’ The Department for Transport is committed to ensuring that disabled people and those with hidden impairments such as autistic people have the same access to transport and opportunities to travel as everyone else; and
- Through the Disability Confident scheme, the Department for Work and Pensions is engaging with employers, offering guidance and helping to promote the skills, talents and abilities of autistic people and associated hidden impairment conditions. Over 11,000 employers have signed up. A Disability Confident Toolkit has also been developed to provide comprehensive information on autism and hidden impairments, as well as guidance on employment and local authority services. In addition, Access to Work has a hidden impairment support team that aims to give advice and guidance to help employers support employees with conditions such as autism, learning disability and/or mental health conditions and it offers eligible people an assessment to find out their needs at work and help to develop a support plan
Asked by: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to reduce the time that people have to wait for a diagnosis of autism.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We are committed to ensuring adults and children receive a timely autism diagnosis in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance.
The NHS Long Term Plan was published on 7 January 2019. The Plan commits to improving autism diagnostic pathways in England and ensuring autistic people have access to high-quality care and support in the community. Over the next three years, autism diagnosis will be included alongside work with children and young people’s mental health services to test and implement the most effective ways to reduce waiting times for specialist services. This will be a step towards achieving timely diagnostic assessments in line with best practice guidelines.
The Department is determined to drive up performance on autism diagnosis nationally. To support this NHS Digital began formally collecting autism diagnosis waiting time data from mental health provider trusts for the first time through the Mental Health Services Data Set in April 2018. Data is submitted on behalf of autism diagnostic services, in line with issued guidance. The current plan is to publish a report after a year’s data has been collected and analysed, in September/October 2019. As this is the first time this data is being submitted, some work to improve its quality may be necessary.
The data being collected covers both adults and children and includes:
- The length of time people with suspected autism wait following referral for a diagnosis before an assessment is started (to compare with the 13 week NICE Recommendation);
- The number of people within the reporting period receiving an autism diagnosis and the time it took to get the diagnosis;
- Profiled information (gender, age, other recorded diagnosis etc);
- The number of autistic people seen by mental health services within the reporting period; and
- Referrals to NHS services due to autism diagnosis or because autism diagnosis not confirmed, or where no further assessment or treatment was appropriate.
In addition, the Department is developing guidance on autism and an accompanying toolkit to support local health and care commissioners with commissioning diagnostic and post-diagnosis services. The guidance will bring together existing guidelines, standards and best practice examples on how to commission effective, high quality services for autistic people. This will include setting out care pathways to support timely diagnosis of autism and effective post-diagnosis support services. We expect the guidance and toolkit to be available by this summer.
Asked by: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the equity of the announcement by the Health and Care Professions Council of its plan to increase its registration fees by 18 per cent from October 2019.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government has made no assessment of the equity of the announcement by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) of its plan to increase its registration fees. The HCPC is independent of Government and funded by registrants’ fees on a costs recovery basis.
Following public consultation, the HCPC is planning to raise its annual fees by £16. If adopted, the HCPC’s annual registration fee will rise from £90 to £106 a year from October 2019. The HCPC registration fees will remain the lowest of any of the United Kingdom-wide health and care regulators. Registration fees are tax-deductible and this fee rise will amount to just over £1 a month extra for most of the HCPC’s registrants.
Asked by: Paul Sweeney (Labour (Co-op) - Glasgow North East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the time taken to award victims of the contaminated blood scandal compensation.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
A small number of compensation payments have been paid to a number of people affected by infected blood where out of court settlements have been agreed or the courts awarded compensation under the Consumer Protection Act. As liability has not been established in the majority of cases, most support for affected individuals has been and continues to be provided through Government funded ex-gratia payments set up for people who have been affected by HIV and/or hepatitis C through treatment with National Health Service-supplied blood or blood products.