Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 22 January 2016 to Question 30262, what plans Health Education England has to reform funding not related to the bursary scheme for postgraduate training in (a) child psychotherapy, (b) clinical psychology and (c) improving access to psychological therapies from 2017.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England (HEE) funding for psychological therapy training is currently determined at a local level based on local need. For 2016-17 HEE will fund those commissions set out in the HEE Commissioning and Investment Plan 2016/17 which was published in December 2015.

The delivery and funding options for healthcare training programmes, such as these, that fall outside the healthcare education funding reform announced in the November 2015 Spending Review may need further consideration as we seek to align systems and ensure that the future supply of qualified healthcare professionals continues to meet the needs of the health service. The Government is working with HEE and other delivery organisations to this end.