Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children living in Tooting constituency are waiting for an Autism assessment.

The data requested is not held centrally. However, some relevant information can be drawn from the Mental Health Service Data Set.

Whilst data is not available at a constituency level, it is available at the integrated care system (ICS) level. According to the latest Autism Waiting Time Statistics, the number of patients aged zero to 17 years old with an open suspected autism referral (diagnosis not yet complete) waiting for first contact appointment in South West London ICS at the end of June 2023 was 1,690. Data on children and young people in this dataset is expected to be an underestimate. Caution should be used when interpreting these statistics since they are experimental rather than official. The latest Autism Waiting Time Statistics are available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/autism-statistics/july-2022-to-june-2023