Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make children’s play a key component of the commitment to creating the healthiest generation of children ever, and as part of the shifts from treatment to prevention, and from hospital to community.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever. This ambition is at the heart of our 10-Year Health Plan, which sets out three radical shifts: from treatment to prevention; from hospital to community; and from analogue to digital care.
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings. The NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit, published in June 2025, includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England.
NHS England is promoting the Play Well toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. A range of communication channels have been used to raise awareness of the toolkit, including through professional bodies, messages from the Chief Nursing Officer, and through delivery networks directly to trusts and professional groups.
We remain committed to working with partners to ensure that the Play Well guidelines and standards are embedded and that all children receive appropriate care and support when they need it.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide funding for a strategic programme to support the NHS in adopting and implementing the Play Well guidelines and standards.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever. This ambition is at the heart of our 10-Year Health Plan, which sets out three radical shifts: from treatment to prevention; from hospital to community; and from analogue to digital care.
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings. The NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England.
To support implementation, NHS England is promoting the Play Well toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. A range of communication channels have been used to raise awareness of the toolkit, including through professional bodies, messages from the Chief Nursing Officer, and through delivery networks directly to trusts and professional groups.
While funding decisions for health play services remain the responsibility of local commissioners, the Department supports NHS England’s work to champion the toolkit and the importance of child-centred care across healthcare settings. We remain committed to working with partners to ensure that the Play Well guidelines and standards are embedded and that all children receive appropriate care and support when they need it.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he will consider making health play specialists a mandatory registered allied health profession.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever. This ambition is at the heart of our 10-Year Health Plan, which sets out three radical shifts: from treatment to prevention; from hospital to community; and from analogue to digital care. This involves ensuring that children receive appropriate care and support, whenever they need it.
In support of this commitment, the NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit, published in June 2025, provides the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England.
The Government has no current plans to extend statutory regulation to health play specialists, or to change the list of professional titles which are protected in law.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to include health play professionals in the NHS workforce plan.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever. This ambition is at the heart of our 10-Year Health Plan, which sets out three radical shifts: from treatment to prevention; from hospital to community; and from analogue to digital care. Ensuring that there is a robust children’s health workforce will be essential to delivering on this ambition.
We will publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan to create a workforce ready to deliver a transformed service as set out in the 10-Year Health Plan. The plan will ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places, with the right skills to care for patients when they need it. We are working through how the plan will articulate the changes for different professional groups.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will include health play professionals in the modelling for multi-disciplinary paediatric teams for the new neighbourhood health service.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We will deliver a Neighbourhood Health Service that serves everybody, everywhere across the country, including children and young people.
An important feature of our new Neighbourhood Health Service will be the rollout of Neighbourhood Health Centres in every community, including multidisciplinary neighbourhood teams who will work together around the needs of children and families.
The make-up of neighbourhood multi-disciplinary teams for children and young people is locally determined by integrated care boards. Local commissioners determine the role for each practitioner within neighbourhood multidisciplinary teams based upon the clinical interventions being undertaken.
Play specialists could be involved as part of a neighbourhood multi-disciplinary teams for children and young people but this is likely only appropriate for multi-disciplinary teams who provide face to face patient care. For example, when a general practitioner and paediatrician hold a joint clinic in the practice or local setting.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth 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 support paediatric settings to adopt the recommended Play Well standards in NHS England's Play Well toolkit published in June 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings.
The NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit, published in June 2025, includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England. It aims to improve access to child-friendly care and specialised health play services across paediatric healthcare.
To support adoption of Play Well standards, NHS England is promoting the toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. The toolkit provides clear guidance on supporting practical training and mentorship in healthcare settings.
A range of communication channels have been used to raise awareness, including engagement with services via professional bodies, messaging via the Chief Nursing Officer, a blog posts and ongoing promotion of the toolkit across the National Health Service through operational delivery networks, directly to trusts and directly with professional groups.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth 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 build capacity in the health play professional sector, including training, qualifications and registration, as sought in NHS England's Play Well toolkit published in June 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings.
The NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit, published in June 2025, includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England. It aims to improve access to child-friendly care and specialised health play services across paediatric healthcare.
NHS England is promoting the toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. The toolkit provides clear guidance on supporting practical training and mentorship in healthcare settings.
The Play Well toolkit aims to ensure that health play services have the right staff with the right qualifications to deliver a high-quality service. This includes ensuring that services are able to support the training and development of the health play specialists they employ.
Health play specialists are trained through foundation degrees and prospective health play specialists can also be trained through the apprenticeship route.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth 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 deliver training in health play principles to multi-disciplinary teams as sought in NHS England's Play Well toolkit published in June 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings.
The NHS England and Starlight Play Well Toolkit, published in June 2025, includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England. It aims to improve access to child-friendly care and specialised health play services across paediatric healthcare.
NHS England is promoting the toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. The toolkit provides clear guidance on supporting practical training and mentorship in healthcare settings.
The Play Well toolkit sets out what employers should consider when developing a standard operating procedure for a play team, and this includes training for staff who may encounter children in the course of their work. It is for services to determine what is required and to ensure their teams receive relevant training.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth 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 digitise the Play Well checklist, as published in NHS England's Play Well toolkit in June 2025, to enable data-based quality improvement, monitoring, evaluation and mapping of provision.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play in healthcare settings.
In June 2025, a number of Operational Delivery Networks came together to digitise the play well checklist, which is available to colleagues across the National Health Service to utilise within their services. The availability of this digital version of the checklist has been included in the content of the webinar and subsequent meetings where the Play Well toolkit is shared. It is also available on the Starlight website.
Asked by: Tom Hayes (Labour - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how will his Department ensure Integrated Care Boards are held accountable for homelessness health outcomes, including hospital discharge into safe accommodation and access to primary care.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
People experiencing homelessness are considered as an inclusion health group. Inclusion health groups are a key cohort within the locally identified priority ‘PLUS’ populations in NHS England’s Core20PLUS5 framework, in accordance with which, integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for reducing inequalities in health outcomes and improving equitable access to healthcare treatments and services. Further information on NHS England’s Core20PLUS5 framework is avaiable at the following link:
NHS England also published A national framework for NHS – action on inclusion health, which supports ICBs to plan, develop, and improve health services to meet the needs of people in inclusion health groups. This framework is avaiable at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/a-national-framework-for-nhs-action-on-inclusion-health/
Additionally, NICE guideline 214 on Integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness supports ICBs to improve homelessness health outcomes, and we continue to explore ways to encourage ICBs to adopt and embed this advice in their commissioning processes. Further information on this advice is available at the following link:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng214
In December 2025, the Government published the National Plan to End Homelessness and Rough Sleeping which commits to ensuring no one eligible for homelessness assistance is discharged to the street after a hospital stay, and which is avaiable at the following link:
The Government will work with the National Health Service and local authorities to improve the implementation of the 2024 guidance Discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and the effective use of existing funding streams to support intermediate care services tailored to the needs of people experiencing homelessness. The guidance Discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness is avaiable at the following link: