Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what training is available for nurses in supporting people with learning disabilities in England.

It is the responsibility of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to set the standards for education and training and ensure newly qualified nurses are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care including those training in learning disability.

Health Education England (HEE) commissions pre-registration nurse training programmes to ensure an appropriately skilled workforce is available to meet service demand. HEE also develop and commission a range of post graduate and supplementary training programmes to enable qualified nurses to continue to develop and enhance their skills.

HEE plans to undertake a long term piece of work to review curriculums of all National Health Service commissioned training programmes to include recognised areas of health including learning disability, mental illness, physical illness and physical ill health and social support needs. HEE will work with regulatory bodies including the NMC to agree the standards and content for education and training, this is anticipated to be completed by April 2017.

The Winterbourne View Concordat sets out that HEE will work in partnership with system partners, Skills for Care and Skills for Health to ensure the current and future workforce possess skills, competencies and knowledge to provide person centred care and support that is needs led and accessible for individuals with a learning disability, autism and behaviour that challenges. This work is on-going.