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 effect changes in the level of Government funding for local authorities on their capacity to provide care in the community for people with learning disabilities and autism since 2010.

Under the Care Act 2014 local authorities have a statutory duty to assess the care and support needs of an adult where it appears they have a need for support. This includes providing support in the community to people with learning disabilities and autism. In 2017/18, the total number of working age adults receiving long term social care support was 253,810. Of these around 45% have a primary reason for support given as learning disability. We have given local authorities access to up to £9.4 billion more dedicated funding for social care over the three years from 2017/18, including the Local Government Finance settlement announcement of a further £150 million for social care. This is supplemented by National Health Service expenditure for example on the development of community support for people with learning disability and autism which has supported a net reduction of around 19% in the number of people with learning disabilities and/or autism who were inpatients in mental health hospitals from a March 2015 baseline of 2,880.

Progress in delivering Building the Right Support is monitored through the Assuring Transformation Dataset with published monthly reports setting out the number of inpatients and the number who have left hospital to live in the community.

NHS England and NHS Digital are developing a reasonable adjustment flag on patients’ summary care records, which can be shared between services, information on the support needs and associated reasonable adjustments for a patient with learning disability or autism.

We have not estimated the number of people with a learning disability or autism living in the community who have a local care and support navigator or key worker. The Department has commissioned the Institute of Public Care to review best practice in care co-ordination for people with a learning disability and long-term conditions who need healthcare services.