Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children were (a) on a waiting list for an assessment and (b) waiting for a diagnosis for (i) attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and (ii) Autism spectrum disorder on 1 September 2023.

Data on the number of children on a waiting list for an assessment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments and waiting for a diagnosis is not held centrally but may be held locally by individual National Health Service trusts. The Department is investigating options for improving data collection and reporting on waiting times for ADHD assessments and diagnoses, to help improve access to ADHD assessments in a timely way and in line with the NICE guideline on ADHD.

With respect to autism, NHS England publishes data on how many people are waiting for an autism diagnosis and for how long, which provides useful information nationally and locally to support local areas to improve their performance and to reduce assessment and diagnosis waiting times.

The statistics published on 8 June 2023 provide data up to 31 March 2023. Of the total 157,579 patients with an open referral for suspected autism (diagnosis not yet complete) in March 2023, 92,622 were aged zero to 17 years. 6,940 of this age group with an open referral received a first contact appointment within 13 weeks. Data on children and young people in this dataset is expected to be an underestimate. The next data release will be published on 14 September.

The current reported autism data comes from the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS) only. Several providers of MHSDS data were affected by a cyber incident which impacted the data for August 2022 onwards. Data presented for August 2022 onwards are imputed estimates based on data from providers not impacted by the cyber incident. The trends and activity reported by these providers are, for the most part, reflective of the providers who were impacted by the cyber incident. However, caution should be used when interpreting these statistics.