Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how she is targeting health prevention services to support children who live in poverty.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department delivers programmes to support the most vulnerable children and families, and reduce health inequalities. The Government published the Best Start for Life: A Vision for the 1,001 Critical Days, in March 2021. This sets out six action areas for improving support for families during the 1,001 critical days, to ensure every baby in England is given the best possible start in life, regardless of background.
The Government is investing an additional £300 million to improve support for families though the joint Department of Health and Social Care and Department for Education Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. It is implementing many elements of the Best Start for Life Vision, delivering a step change in outcomes for babies, children, and their parents and carers in 75 local authorities in England, including those with high levels of deprivation. The Government has commissioned two in-depth independent evaluations of the programme.
The Healthy Start scheme helps to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies, and young children aged under four years old from very low-income households. The latest Healthy Start data was published on 28 March 2024, with an uptake of 66%. Healthy Start now supports approximately 366,000 beneficiaries.
In November 2022, NHS England published Core20PLUS5, an approach to reducing health inequalities for children and young people at both a national and system level. The approach defines a target population cohort, and identifies five clinical areas requiring accelerated improvement, which are asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, oral health, and mental health. Where possible, indicators in the Child and Maternal Health Profile provide a breakdown by the index of multiple deprivation, which is available at the following link:
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/child-health-profiles
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, whether he has had discussions at the UN on the potential use of UN peacekeepers to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani - Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
The deployment of UN peacekeepers would require a UN Security Council Resolution and the consent of all parties to the conflict. We judge neither of these requirements to be obtainable at this time.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Israeli attack on Iran on 19 April 2024 on the wider regional (a) military and (b) humanitarian situation.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani - Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
At the G7 Foreign Ministers' meeting on 19 April, the Foreign Secretary and G7 partners called for all parties to prevent further escalation.
During his visit to the region last week, the Foreign Secretary reiterated to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we will continue to stand up for Israel's security, and the security of all our regional partners. He also made clear that we must maintain our focus on getting more aid into Gaza and getting hostages out.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that children and young people who are discharged from paediatric intensive therapy units to (a) a ward and (b) the community receive rehabilitation services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is a priority for the Department to ensure that discharged patients, including children and young people, are provided with the right care, at the right place, and at the right time. Rehabilitation is critical to ensuring that patients discharged on intermediate care pathways from acute settings receive appropriate support to recover. National Health Service integrated care boards are responsible for ensuring there is sufficient capacity to meet demand for rehabilitation services, including for children and young people.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of people working in community rehabilitation services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England published the Intermediate Care Framework and Rehabilitation and reablement model in September 2023. The Framework sets out actions systems can take to increase intermediate care rehabilitation and reablement capacity, including through optimising the use of the registered therapy workforce and maximising the use of skilled support workers. The framework is available at the following link:
The Intermediate Care Frontrunner sites, and pilot work with seven local geographies has worked to define the workforce required to meet the demand for bedded and non-bedded intermediate care rehabilitation and reablement. NHS England is planning further work in 2024/2025 to progress the implementation and learning from the workforce pilots and to support systems nationally to progress workforce planning processes and estimate the workforce required to meet the demand.
Better Care Fund capacity and demand plans will inform alignment and reporting of progress to increase workforce capacity across health and care including rehabilitation and reablement workforce capacity.
The NHS Long term workforce plan commits to supporting Integrated Care Systems to develop local strategies that would support local quality apprenticeship programmes targeted at specific occupational shortages and skills gaps and transformation across a number of settings including community care. The NHS long term workforce plan is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-long-term-workforce-plan/
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to ensure that people with significant mental health issues are not discharged to the community.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Clinicians will decide when a person is medically fit for discharge. On 26 January 2024, new statutory guidance was published for those being discharged from mental health inpatient settings. This sets out how health and care systems can work effectively together to support the discharge process from hospital, and ensure the right support in the community. The guidance also includes best practice in relation to patient and carer involvement in discharge planning.
NHS England has asked all systems to review their community mental health services, to ensure that they have clear policies and practice in place for patients with serious mental illness, who require intensive community treatment and follow-up, but where engagement is a challenge. NHS England will provide national guidance to support reviews, which will be completed by Autumn 2024. NHS England will consider further steps as appropriate, following the completion of the reviews.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of ensuring that rehabilitation is given an equal status in healthcare as to medicine and surgery.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ensuring that patients have access to effective rehabilitation is a priority for the Government. NHS England published its intermediate care framework for rehabilitation, reablement and recovery following hospital discharge, to help ensure high quality step-down care, in September 2023. Implementation of the framework aims to improve patient experience and outcomes. It should also improve patient flow, and free up National Health Service hospital capacity for those who need it most.
A new community rehabilitation and reablement model was published alongside the framework. It focuses on how systems should use the workforce effectively, put patients and families at the centre of discussions, and ensure any transition points will be as seamless as possible. Integrated care systems, commissioners, and providers should work together with social care partners to implement the recommended actions.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that intensive care units have a full complement of rehabilitation staff.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local trusts are responsible for planning their service capacity to meet expected demand.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. Backed by over £2.4 billion, the LTWP will significantly expand education and training places, including of allied health professionals.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many times she has met with the Community Rehabilitation Alliance since her appointment.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care meets regularly with external stakeholders, and ministerial meetings are published on the GOV.UK website on a quarterly basis.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she is taking steps to (a) commission and (b) access scientific studies on the (i) physical and (ii) psychological impact of vaping (A) non nicotine and (B) nicotine products.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The health advice is clear, if you don’t smoke, don’t vape, and children should never vape. Vaping can play a role in helping adult smokers to quit, but the Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children, with youth vaping tripling in the last three years and one in five children having now used a vape.
Using the best available evidence is central to the development of regulations and requirements regarding vapes. This includes evidence on the health harms from vaping, both nicotine and non-nicotine vapes, in the short, medium, and long term. We monitor and assess the emerging international research, as can be seen in Public Health England’s Nicotine Vaping in England reports, and work closely with the academic and scientific community to interrogate the data on the physical and psychological effects of vaping and smoking.
We are also keen to ensure that we play an active role in driving forward the knowledge around longer-term health harms. As part of this, we are actively exploring options to partner with research bodies and commission research. We will provide more detail in due course.