Tag: Lord Laming

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Laming on 2014-06-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure there are sufficient beds in acute mental health services.

Earl Howe

The Government has made it clear that beds must always be available for those who need them. The 2014-15 Mandate to NHS England states that every community must develop plans to ensure no one in mental health crisis will be turned away. In February 2014 we published the mental health Crisis Care Concordat, which describes the roles and responsibilities for improving outcomes for people experiencing a crisis. This makes it clear that local commissioners should commission a range of mental health services that allows beds to be readily available for people in urgent need. Local areas are expected to commit to and agree to deliver their own ‘Mental Health Crisis Declaration’.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Laming on 2014-06-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to improve the services for sufferers of dementia and their carers.

Earl Howe

On 26 March 2012, the Prime Minister launched his Challenge on Dementia. The Challenge sets the commitment to increase diagnosis rates, raise awareness and understanding and double funding for research for dementia by 2015.

On the 28 February 2014, the Secretary of State announced his ambition for improving dementia care and support for people with dementia, their family and carers. This signalled the importance of a tailored plan of care as part of a package of high quality, personalised dementia care and support.

The co-chairs of the three Champion Groups supporting delivery of the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia have reported their progress to the Prime Minister on the second year of the Challenge. They have also set out their ambition for driving improvements in year three of the Challenge and beyond and to highlight cross-cutting themes and challenges shared across the champion groups, which they will continue to work on together. For example, working together to support the work on global action on dementia; increasing public and professional awareness and understanding of dementia and; the need to accelerate learning across the system on making integrated care and support a reality.

Since the launch of the Challenge, we have also made significant progress across all three strands of the challenge, but there is still work to be done.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Laming on 2014-06-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take to reduce the number of children and young people who currently disappear from public care.

Lord Nash

It is every Council’s responsibility to provide looked after children with safe, secure care. This includes protecting them from the risks of going missing. New guidance was issued in January 2014 on children who go missing from care. The guidance places a duty on local authorities to offer all children an independent interview when they return from going missing. These interviews can reduce the likelihood of the child going missing again, as well as identify risks to which they may have been exposed whilst missing. We have also now started to collect national data for all children who go missing from care, not just those missing for 24 hours. This data will help build a clearer picture of the extent to which children go missing from local authority care.

The new Ofsted inspection framework has a focus on missing children. To be judged as “good” local authorities will have to show that:

“Comprehensive records are held and shared between agencies to help and protect children and young people. Together they take steps to ensure that all children, including those who are excluded from school, are safe and that for those who are missing or often missing there is a clear plan of urgent action in place to protect them and to reduce the risk of harm or further harm.”

Where Ofsted find poor practice they make specific recommendations to the local authority in their report.