Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of whether the NHS workforce plan should be updated by NHS England to reflect the staffing needs of the eight new children and young people's gender services regional centres.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No specific formal assessment has been made. Gender medicine is a highly specialised field of medicine, and NHS England are actively working to recruit more staff for the new regional children and young people gender identity services. NHS England has also been working closely with other professional bodies to develop tailored training for these professionals. NHS England will commission the required professional training curriculum and competencies framework, not just for staff working in the new gender services, but also for clinicians working in secondary, primary, and community care. It is expected that this will also help to increase the support for children and young people, ensuring they receive a more holistic model of care.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many child mental health patients have been held in inappropriate out of area placements since March 2021.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
While NHS England does collect internal management data on this topic, the statistics are not considered robust enough to be published.
Asked by: Dean Russell (Conservative - Watford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress NHS England has made on developing a neuropsychiatric service specification.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
NHS England remains committed to the continued development and improvement of all services, including neuropsychiatry. Neuropsychiatry covers a broad spectrum of mental health support, for people with a broad spectrum of neurological conditions, and as such, provision of neuropsychiatry falls within the care pathway of a range of services.
The provision of neuropsychiatry is included in, and will be strengthened within, the updated neurology service specification, neurosurgery specification, and complex rehabilitation service specification. The requirement and scope of a standalone neuropsychiatry service specification is being discussed with the Royal College of Psychiatry and mental health colleagues.
The Neurology Clinical Reference Group (CRG) will continue to lead this work and take forward discussions with the Royal College of Psychiatry, which is represented on both the Neurology CRG and Complex Rehabilitation and Disability CRG, and is contributing to the development of the service specifications listed above.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2024 to Question 19419 on Infant Mortality: Certification, what her planned timetable is for extending the scheme to pregnancy losses before 1 September 2018.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
On 22 February 2024, we launched the Baby Loss Certificate service, fulfilling our commitment in the Women’s Health Strategy. We recognise that some people will wish to obtain a certificate for a baby loss that happened in the past. It is currently open to pregnancy losses since 1 September 2018, and we will extend this to earlier losses as soon as we can.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help support (a) hospice and (b) other end-of-life services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government added palliative care services to the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission, promoting a more consistent national approach, and supporting commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care.
The majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services. However, we also recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, play in providing support to people at end of life, and their families. Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding hospices receive is dependent on many factors, including what other statutory services are available within the ICB footprint. Charitable hospices provide a range of services which go beyond that which statutory services are legally required to provide, and consequently, the funding arrangements reflect this.
To support ICBs, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications for both adults and children. NHS England has also commissioned the development of a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together relevant, all age local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of both adults and children in their local population, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities.
NHS England has also funded seven strategic clinical networks for palliative and end of life care. These networks support commissioners in the delivery of outstanding clinical and personalised care for people in the last years of life, and reduce local variation.
At a national level, NHS England has confirmed it will renew the Children and Young People’s hospice funding for 2024/25, again allocating £25 million of grant funding for children’s hospices, using the same prevalence-based allocation approach as in 2022/23 and 2023/24. The Government has provided £60 million of additional funding to help deliver the one-off payments to over 27,000 eligible staff employed on dynamically linked Agenda for Change contracts by non-NHS organisations, including some hospices.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to commission an independent review of the Commission on Human Medicines’ Expert Working Group’s report on Hormone Pregnancy Tests.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We remain hugely sympathetic to the families who believe that they have suffered as a result of using Hormone Pregnancy Tests. We have no plans to set up an independent review to examine the findings of the Expert Working Group. In the interests of transparency, all evidence collected and papers considered by the Expert Working Group were published in 2018, along with full minutes of its discussions. Details of conflicts of interests, and how these were managed, were also published.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children have been waiting longer than (a) 18 and (b) 24 months for a community paediatric appointment as of 17 April 2024.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Monthly information on waiting lists and times for community health services in England can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what data they are gathering on countries currently implementing immunisation programmes for infant respiratory syncytial virus regarding (1) acceptance and uptake, and (2) hospitalisations.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK Health Security Agency continues to monitor international reporting. In the United States, as of 31 January 2024, maternal immunisation was 17.9%. By February 2024, 43% of infants under eight months old had received a dose of nirsevimab.
In Galicia, Spain, 92.9% of 5,357 infants born between 25 September 2023 and 4 February 2024 had nirsevimab, plus 79.7% of 5,823 in a catch-up programme. The peak of hospitalisation rate in infants under six months old was 102 per 100,000, for season 2023 to 2024 during the week starting 27 November 2023 compared to a median of 776 for seasons 2017 to 2018, 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020, peaking during the first week of January 2024.
In Luxembourg, 84% of 1,524 infants born in hospital between early October and mid-December 2023 received nirsevimab. Luxembourg observed a decrease in hospitalisation in infants under six months old of 69% between the 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024 respiratory syncytial virus seasons.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to ensure that people eligible for NHS continuing healthcare funding have access to services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing Care sets out in paragraph 185 that, where an individual is eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), the integrated care board (ICB) is responsible for care planning, commissioning services, and case management. The ICB is responsible for planning strategically, specifying outcomes, procuring services, and managing demand and provider performance in relation to CHC. The services commissioned must include ongoing case management, including review or reassessment of the individual’s needs.
NHS England holds ICBs accountable, and engages with them to ensure that they discharge their functions via timely and well-established assurance mechanisms. The national framework also sets out that those in receipt of CHC continue to be entitled to access to the full range of primary, community, secondary, and other health services.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support unpaid carers in rural areas.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Act (2014) requires local authorities to deliver a wide range of sustainable, high-quality care and support services, including support for unpaid carers. Local authorities are required to undertake a Carer’s Assessment for any unpaid carer who appears to have a need for support, and to meet their eligible needs on request from the carer.
Through the Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF), we are investing £42.6 million for innovative local projects focused on transforming the care sector. The purpose of the ARF is to support two or more projects in each area, with at least one of those having a particular focus on unpaid carers. More than half of the projects, and at least one in each integrated care system area, are focused on identifying, recognising, and supporting unpaid carers.