Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking (1) to ensure provision of mental health services for people living with HIV, and (2) to ensure there are effective referral pathways between HIV clinics and NHS Talking Therapies.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has now approved plans to fully delegate the commissioning of appropriate specialised services to integrated care boards (ICBs), including specialised HIV services, in the East of England, Midlands and the North West regions of England from April 2024.
NHS England will also continue to jointly commission appropriate specialised services with ICBs, including specialised HIV services, in the South West, South East, London and the North East and Yorkshire regions of England for a further year. This will help support a smooth transition of commissioning responsibility by April 2025.
The national service specification sets out the requirement for agreeing pathways which define responsibility for meeting non-HIV needs of patients and identify shared care, including clinical psychology and psychological support services.
From 2018/19, all NHS Talking Therapies services have been commissioned to establish pathways for people living with long-term physical health conditions as a key mechanism to ensure the delivery of increased access to psychological therapies. The NHS Talking Therapies Programme has developed an e-learning module for Talking Therapies staff on HIV. This will enable therapists to support people with anxiety and depression related to the experience of living with HIV.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of the timing of publishing arrangements for the 2024 intake of the Education Psychology Funded Training on the number of students applying for training.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. That is why the department is investing £21 million in training 400 more educational psychologists from September 2024. The department regularly reviews the data regarding applications to the course. This is a highly competitive training scheme, with a high volume of applications.
The department is not able to comment on plans to publish the details of the funding and arrangements for the September 2024 intake of the Educational Psychology Funded Training Scheme, as this is subject to a live procurement. An update will be provided as soon as possible.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when her Department plans to publish the details of (a) funding and (b) arrangements for the September 2024 intake of the Education Psychology Funded Training scheme.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. That is why the department is investing £21 million in training 400 more educational psychologists from September 2024. The department regularly reviews the data regarding applications to the course. This is a highly competitive training scheme, with a high volume of applications.
The department is not able to comment on plans to publish the details of the funding and arrangements for the September 2024 intake of the Educational Psychology Funded Training Scheme, as this is subject to a live procurement. An update will be provided as soon as possible.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
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 the adequacy of the number of staff available to conduct autism assessments for (a) children and (b) adults (i) nationally and (ii) in York.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The National Framework for autism assessment services, published by NHS England in April 2023, recognises the need to increase the supply of specialist workforce for autism assessment services.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce; this is backed by over £2.4 billion over the next five years to fund additional education and training places. We aim to increase training places by 26% for both clinical psychology and child and adolescent psychotherapy by 2031, taking the combined number of training places to over 1,300. Training places will be more than 1,000 each year up to 2028/29.
In addition to education and training for clinical psychologists and child and adolescent psychotherapists, over the next three years, NHS England has committed funding of over £600 million to grow the wider psychological professions workforce through training approximately 15,000 more individuals to undertake psychological therapist and psychological practitioner roles.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
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 help improve NHS (a) social and (b) emotional care for people living with kidney disease.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In England, care for patients with chronic kidney disease is addressed through the specialised service specifications for renal services. Service specifications define the standards of care expected from organisations providing specialised care and, for renal services, they require patients to have access to psychology services and social work advice as a core component of a multi-disciplinary team.
NHS England, through its Renal Services Transformation Programme (RSTP) and regional renal clinical networks, is progressing a series of programmes to: provide better and more joined-up care across care settings; reduce health inequalities; and focus on prevention and timely intervention, through streamlined patient pathways to address management of deteriorating kidney disease. Psychosocial support within renal services has been identified by the RSTP as a theme for improvement.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of part-funding the training of educational psychologists; and whether she is taking steps to increase the number of educational psychologists.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department knows that educational psychologists play a vital role in the support available to children and young people, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
That is why, since 2020, the department has increased the number of educational psychologist trainees that it funds, from 160 to over 200 per annum, to continue supporting Local Authority educational psychology services. This includes full funding for the tuition fees and a bursary for the first year, while a bursary for the second and third years of training is funded by local authorities where trainees undertake their placements.
In November 2022, the department announced a further £21 million investment to train 400 more educational psychologists from 2024, in addition to the £10 million announced earlier in 2022 to train over 200 educational psychologists from September 2023.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the value for money provided by educational psychologists; whether she has had recent discussions with the Association of Educational Psychologists’ on recruitment and retention within the profession; and if she will make it her policy to ensure local authorities are provided with sufficient funding to increase recruitment and retention rates.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. This was evidenced in a recent research report on the workforce, commissioned by the department and published by Warwick Institute of Employment Research and Ecorys, in June 2023. This is why the department is investing a further £21 million to fund the training of a further 400 educational psychologists from 2024.
The department regularly engages with stakeholders, including the Association of Educational Psychologists, on issues relating to the educational psychology workforce. With regards to funding, it is the responsibility of employers to decide what is affordable within their overall resources. The majority of government funding is not ringfenced in recognition of local authorities being best placed to understand local priorities.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the 10 recommendations in Kidney Care UK's report entitled Caring for people with kidney disease: Psychosocial health – a manifesto for action, published in June 2022, what steps he (a) is taking and (b) plans to take to improve the (i) social and (ii) emotional care provided to people with kidney disease.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In England, care for patients with chronic kidney disease is addressed through the specialised service specifications for renal services. Service specifications define the standards of care expected from organisations providing specialised care and, for renal services, they require patients to have access to psychology services and social work advice as a core component of a multi-disciplinary team.
NHS England, through its Renal Services Transformation Programme and regional renal clinical networks, is progressing a series of programmes to provide better and more joined-up care across care settings, reducing health inequalities, and focussing on prevention and timely intervention through streamlined patient pathways to address management of deteriorating kidney disease. Psychosocial support within renal services has been identified by the Programme as a theme for improvement.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of educational psychologists providing services to children in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Over the past five years, the department has funded a total of 304 educational psychologist (EP) training places across four London-based institutions. This figure includes a total of 56 funded training places per academic year starting in 2018 and 2019, increasing to a total of 64 funded training places per academic year starting in 2020, 2021 and 2022. A further cohort of 64 trainees is due to take up their funded training places at London-based institutions as of this autumn. As training places are allocated to institutions, the requested figures by parliamentary constituency and borough are not available. Additionally, the number employed in the private sector is not collected centrally.
Information on the state-funded school workforce in England, including the number of EPs that were reported as being directly employed by local authorities in England, is published in the annual ‘School workforce in England’ national statistics release, which is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
According to the School Workforce Census, in November 2022 there were 2,325 EPs directly employed by local authorities in England, including 646 directly employed by local authorities in London, and 17 by the London Borough of Enfield. The figure provided also excludes local authorities who did not submit a return, or where EP provision has been outsourced or the provision has been shared with other local authorities.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many educational psychologist training places were funded by her Department in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) the London Borough of Enfield and (c) London in each of the last five years.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Over the past five years, the department has funded a total of 304 educational psychologist (EP) training places across four London-based institutions. This figure includes a total of 56 funded training places per academic year starting in 2018 and 2019, increasing to a total of 64 funded training places per academic year starting in 2020, 2021 and 2022. A further cohort of 64 trainees is due to take up their funded training places at London-based institutions as of this autumn. As training places are allocated to institutions, the requested figures by parliamentary constituency and borough are not available. Additionally, the number employed in the private sector is not collected centrally.
Information on the state-funded school workforce in England, including the number of EPs that were reported as being directly employed by local authorities in England, is published in the annual ‘School workforce in England’ national statistics release, which is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.
According to the School Workforce Census, in November 2022 there were 2,325 EPs directly employed by local authorities in England, including 646 directly employed by local authorities in London, and 17 by the London Borough of Enfield. The figure provided also excludes local authorities who did not submit a return, or where EP provision has been outsourced or the provision has been shared with other local authorities.