Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve the diagnosis process and reduce the time taken of children going through paediatric care pathways.

This Government is committed to improving health outcomes for children and young people, and there is a wide range of ongoing activity to improve the responsiveness of the National Health Service in the diagnosis and treatment of children on care pathways. This includes support for the development by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health of Paediatric Care Online, a resource for the clinical workforce across the full range of children’s health issues. This will be launched later in 2015 and is expected to make a real improvement to the consistency and effectiveness of paediatric care.

In addition the Government is committed to improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) for children and young people. The new waiting standards for Early Intervention in Psychosis (so that 50% of people who experience first time psychosis receive a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved care package within two weeks) came into effect on 1 April 2015 and NHS England is aiming to expand the children and young people’s IAPT programme to cover the whole country by 2018.

NHS England is looking at the impact on cancer outcomes of early diagnosis projects, and is working on the early diagnosis of sepsis, and detection of the deteriorating child. In addition NHS England has a very active and appropriately scrutinised process for the governance surrounding Paediatric Specialist Services.