Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of processes within NHS mental health trusts for monitoring whether patients have been offered NICE-recommended psychological therapies.

NHS Improvement’s Single Oversight Framework (SOF) is designed to help National Health Service providers meet and exceed the standards required of them. Two of the standards in the SOF for mental health providers which can trigger action relate to improving access to National Institute for Health and Care Exellence-recommended psychological therapies: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) and Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP).

Additionally, NHS England employs a Mental Health Intensive Support Team. This team undertakes work with mental health providers to improve their operational processes, information systems and data submission to support delivery and monitoring of both the IAPT and EIP waiting and access standards.

NHS England expects that clinical commissioning group contracts with providers include the monitoring of providers’ delivery against defined service specifications.