Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he (a) is taking and (b) plans to take to reduce waiting times for children's neurodevelopmental assessments.

Integrated care boards are expected to have regard to the relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines when commissioning services, including assessments for children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

In 2021/22, we invested £13 million through the NHS Long Term Plan and COVID-19 Mental Health Recovery Plan to reduce waiting times for autism diagnoses. This included £10.5 million to enable local systems to test different diagnostic pathways, explore ways to reduce waiting times and address backlogs caused by the pandemic and £2.5 million has been allocated to test and implement ways to reduce waiting times for children and young people in 2022/23. NHS England is developing a national framework for how children, young people and adults should receive an autism diagnosis to improve the quality of diagnostic processes and reduce waiting times. In addition, we have invested £600,000 to expand a pilot to improve early identification of autism and other neurodiverse conditions to at least 100 schools.

. NHS England is working with local authorities’ children’s social care, education services and expert charities to support neurodivergent children, including children with ADHD, through the assessment and diagnostic process.