Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November 2017 to Question HL3576, what steps his Department is taking to strengthen families.

The Department undertakes and supports a range of programmes and initiatives which seek to strengthen families.

For example, the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme was introduced to England a decade ago as a key part of government early years policy. The FNP is a programme of intensive home visiting by specially trained nurses which aims to support young mothers expecting their first child to improve outcomes.

The Friends and Family Test (FFT) is a feedback tool used to improve services for patients. Since its launch in 2013, the FFT has been rolled out in phases to most National Health Service-funded services in England, giving all patients the opportunity to leave feedback on their care and treatment. The FFT has produced well over 30 million pieces of feedback so far – and the total rises by over a million a month – making it the biggest source of patient opinion in the world.

We want better support for families with children and young people who are at risk of developing mental health problems. A Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health published on 4 December 2017 seeks to build on the progress already made. This ranges from setting up the first ever waiting times for mental health to supporting the recommendations of the 2015 Future in Mind strategy, through investing £1.4 billion to bring together all services working with children and young people to improve mental health services.

All of NHS England’s work programmes have input from family/carer experts by experience and true collaborative partnership working with stakeholders where families are strongly represented. The Transforming Care Programme recognises that when children and young people have a learning disability, autism or both and behaviours that challenge and/or a mental health condition, the impact on the family as a whole can be significant. One of the key principles of our Transforming Care Service Model is that families are provided with the right support to help children and young people live in the community. In March 2017, NHS England introduced a Care, Education, and treatment review policy for children reflecting the vital role the parents and extended family play in the lives of people including children and young people with learning disabilities, autism or both. In September, NHS England published guidance to supplement the service model which was specific to children and young people “with learning disabilities, autism or both”. This guidance – focused at commissioners, details the support and services they should be commissioning to ensure that children and families are supported from point of identification, through to short break provision, and specialist provision for children and young people with the most complex needs.

Public Health England encourages healthy living amongst families with young children through its Start4Life social marketing campaign. This is aimed at parents-to-be and parents of children up to the age of five. The Start4Life website has a range of advice and resources which can help mothers continue breastfeeding and leaflets and resources are available which professionals can order for free.