Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government programmes that assist low-income families who are supporting children with autism.

No recent assessment has been made by this Department of the effectiveness of Government programmes in specifically assisting low-income families with autistic children.

The special educational needs and disability (SEND) reforms in the Children’s and Families Act 2014 have brought benefits for all autistic children and young people and their families by providing for a system of support across education, health and social care to ensure that services are organised with the needs and preferences of the child and their family at the centre of the process.

Reforms introduced by the Act include the publication of local offers of SEND services by local authorities, the introduction of streamlined education, health and care needs assessments and Education, Health and Care Plans, which set out in one place the support from education, health and care services children and young people will receive.

Since May 2016, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have been inspecting local areas on their effectiveness in fulfilling their new duties for children with SEND. All 152 local areas in England will be inspected over a period of five years.

We have included autism indicators on diagnosis and post-diagnostic outcomes in the Mental Health Services Dataset, with data collected from 1 April 2018. This will bring more transparency to the process, provide more accurate data on performance nationally and help drive up performance.