Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether housing status is recorded by maternity services.

Maternity services seek to understand women’s housing circumstances at their first booking appointment and later appointments, so that where concerns arise, they can be referred for housing support where needed. Housing status can be recorded locally, but it is not reported as mandatory within the Maternity Services Data Set.

NHS England's Statement on information on health inequalities includes the expectation that integrated care boards and National Health Service trusts should consider how the recording of housing status can support the upstream identification of health inequalities, in line with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guideline 214 on Integrated health and social care for people experiencing homelessness. Both NHS England’s statement and NICE’s guideline are available, respectively, at the following two links:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-englands-statement-on-information-on-health-inequalities/

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng214/resources/integrated-health-and-social-care-for-people-experiencing-homelessness-pdf-66143775200965