Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South 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 stop the abuse of vulnerable people by care home staff.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
All regulated providers, including care homes, are responsible for assuring the skills and competence of staff to prevent any abuse of those with care and support needs. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) holds regulated providers to account to ensure that care homes provide safe care. Where the CQC identifies evidence of abuse, it will take appropriate action, including raising concerns with the relevant local authority, integrated care board or the police.
The local authority also has a statutory duty to make enquiries regarding safeguarding concerns in all settings, including care homes. The local authority must decide what action is necessary to protect individuals and ensure that any such action is taken. The Health and Care Act 2022 includes provision for the CQC to assess the performance of local authorities’ delivery of adult social care statutory duties and improving safety is a consideration in the development of the framework. This is expected to be implemented from April 2023.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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 reduce waiting times for elective surgeries in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including in Bolton South East. We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity. This funding aims to deliver the equivalent of approximately nine million additional checks and procedures and 30% further elective activity by 2024/25 than pre-pandemic levels. A proportion of this funding will be invested in workforce capacity and training and we have committed to invest £5.9 billion for new beds, equipment and technology.
The target to eliminate waiting times of two years or more for elective procedures was met in July 2022 and we aim to eliminate waiting time of eighteen months or more by April 2023. This will be achieved through increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand choices made regarding their care.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of residential care homes that have closed in Bolton South East constituency since 2010.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Quality Commission records care homes which have closed as ‘deactivated’. Since 2010, 5 care homes in Bolton South East have been deactivated. The ‘deactivated’ locations exclude care homes where the provider continues to operate under a new, separate registration, which may be due to a change in legal entity or provider.
Some care homes have both types of care home service with nursing and care home service without nursing and in these cases, the home is classified as a nursing home. A residential home is a care home service without nursing.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will take steps to increase the availability of face-to-face GP appointments in Bolton South East constituency..
Answered by Will Quince
On 22 September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which contains measures to assist people make an informed choice on their general practitioner (GP) practice, book an appointment more easily, benefit from more care options and increase the diversity of general practice teams. This aims to increase the availability of appointment types, such as face-to-face, in England, including in Bolton South East.
NHS England’s guidance states that GP practices must provide face to face appointments and remote consultations and should respect preferences for face-to-face care unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary. While remote consultations can provide additional choice, flexibility and convenience for patients, this is not suitable for all patients or in all circumstances.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has provided additional (a) financial and (b) other support to help tackle (i) patient backlogs and (ii) increased workloads in GP surgeries in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’, published in February 2022, stated the ambition to reduce patient backlogs for planned National Health Service treatments and the government plans to spend more than £8bn from 2022/23 to 2024/25. We made £520 million available to expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. This was in addition to at least £1.5 billion announced in 2020 by 2024 which includes supporting increased workloads in GP surgeries, including in Bolton South East. In September 2022, ‘Our plan for patients’ announced measures to support GP practices increase access and manage workload such as, the provision of 31,000 phone lines and freeing up funding rules to widen the types of staff that work in general practice, including in Bolton South East.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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 uptake of breast cancer screening in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is working with NHS England to finalise the delivery of £10 million for breast screening units, including determining which areas will benefit from this investment.
National Health Service breast screening providers are also encouraged to work with Cancer Alliances, Primary Care Networks, NHS regional teams and the voluntary sector to promote the uptake of breast screening and ensure access to services.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate she has made of health inequalities in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Caroline Johnson
No specific estimate has been made.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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 support young people with eating disorders in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Caroline Johnson
In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health and eating disorder services, including in Bolton South East. Making it easier to access general practice through our ABCD priorities will expand this route as a gateway to mental health care.
Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expand these services for adults, children and young people in England, including in Bolton South East.
We will invest approximately £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2023/24 and an additional £53 million per year in children and young people's community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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 improve access to mental health services in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Caroline Johnson
In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health and eating disorder services, including in Bolton South East. Making it easier to access general practice through our ABCD priorities will expand this route as a gateway to mental health care.
Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expand these services for adults, children and young people in England, including in Bolton South East.
We will invest approximately £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2023/24 and an additional £53 million per year in children and young people's community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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 improve access to NHS dental services in Bolton South East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
No specific assessment has been made. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Bolton South East.
The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.