Autism Diagnosis Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Paul Williams
Main Page: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)Department Debates - View all Paul Williams's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) on securing this important debate.
Waiting frustrates us all. Waiting for a bus, one might have expected it in just 10 minutes or so, and it is frustrating to have to wait a bit longer. Waiting to speak in a debate, it sometimes takes many hours to be called —thankfully, not today. But how long should a parent wait if their child is not making friends, has difficulty communicating their needs, avoids eye contact and likes lining things up, and if they think that that child might have autism?
I mentioned on social media last week that I was going to speak in this debate. I have had more than 500 responses from people, each one telling me their story. Nichola has been told that she has to wait three years for her son to be assessed; Eleanor has been told she will have to wait four years for her daughter. Jodie-Marie said that that for her son it was two years, for Louise it was two years and for Janine it was three years. Leigh has a child who was referred last year and been given a first diagnostic appointment in June 2019.
Delays leave many families unable to obtain the education and social support they need, and mean that during the crucial years of child development children are not receiving optimal care. Stuart Dexter leads autism support charity Daisy Chain in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and is in the Public Gallery today. He lives and breathes such stories of frustration every day.
Stuart told me that parents cannot understand why in Middlesbrough assessment takes four months to begin but in Stockton, the town next door, it takes three or four years. The two towns are next to each other and work with the same mental health trust, but have two completely different experiences of care. I can tell those parents why: there is no central leadership of the process, no measurement and no targets, and responsibility is fragmented. Local authorities and CCGs are not working together properly, and the staff delivering assessments work for four different organisations.
On behalf of hundreds of people in Stockton South living with autism, I will ask the Minister two questions. We all come into politics to make a difference and they are not party political. Will she include indicators on diagnosis waiting times in the mental health services data set, to measure how long it takes for people to get diagnosed? Will she commit to introducing a waiting time standard for autism diagnosis and to including it in the CCG improvement and assessment framework, setting a target for maximum waiting times? Those actions might seem small but they could be a huge and welcome leap forward in creating a diagnosis process that is fit for purpose. If they were included in the NHS mandate for 2018-19, we could make a massive difference for thousands of families.
Several hon. Members rose—