Tag: Luciana Berger

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-04-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress has been made on improving women’s mental health since the publication in 2010 of Working towards women’s wellbeing: unfinished business.

Alistair Burt

The Department’s mental health policy teams provide strategic policy advice on mental health for people of all ages and genders. When issues are specific to a gender these are addressed within the policy development.

The Coalition Government published a national mental health strategy No Health Without Mental Health in 2012 which addressed mental health issues for the whole population, and introduced the concept of parity of esteem for mental health. This Government continues to hold NHS England to account through the NHS Mandate for the achievement of measurable progress towards the parity of esteem for mental health.

The Government announced almost £1 billion of additional investment for mental health in January 2016 including £290 million of new investment over the next five years to provide mental healthcare for new mothers. The Mental Health Taskforce Report published in February 2016 set out a recommendation for NHS England to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period. The recommendation stated this should include access to psychological therapies and the right range of specialist community or inpatient care so that comprehensive, high-quality services are in place across England.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-04-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure suicide prevention services are autism-appropriate.

Alistair Burt

The information requested is not collected centrally.

Public Health England (PHE) published ‘Guidance for developing a local suicide prevention action plan’ in 2014. The guidance states the importance of developing multi-agency suicide prevention groups to ensure that local suicide prevention plans are informed by local intelligence and the needs of the local community. PHE is currently refreshing this guidance.

We welcomed the independent Mental Health Taskforce recommendation to ensure that all local areas have multi-agency suicide prevention plans in place by 2017.

The National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2012) stated that accessible, high-quality mental health services are fundamental to reducing the risk of suicide in people of all ages with mental health problems.

Last year, NHS England commissioned the world’s first Learning Disability Mortality Review Programme to support local areas to review deaths of people with learning disabilities and to use the information to improve service provision so that physical and mental health problems can be identified and addressed. The process is currently being piloted in the North East and Cumbria.

We have made monumental strides in the way we help manage conditions such as autism in this country and that is why we are working alongside people with autism, and their carers,

to make sure they have access to healthcare with adjustments made for their conditions. This is a focus of the Cross Government Autism Strategy which was revised in 2014 as Think Autism.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what consultations he plans to undertake on the levels of bursaries and salary support for trainee clinical psychologists in the 2017-18 cohort.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England (HEE) funding for trainees in clinical psychology is currently determined at a local level based on local need and is subject to annual workforce planning. For 2016-17, HEE will fund those commissions set out in the HEE Commissioning and Investment Plan for 2016-17. HEE’s plans for training clinical psychologists remain unchanged from 2015-16 with 526 commissions proposed for 2016-17. HEE will set out its plans for 2017-18 training commissions in its next annual Commissioning and Investment Plan or Workforce Plan for England which is expected to be published in December 2016 prior to the start of the financial year.

The Government is currently consulting on how the education and funding reforms for pre-registration undergraduate and postgraduate non-medical courses (nursing, midwifery and allied health courses) which are currently funded through both HEE funded tuition and an NHS bursary/reduced rate loan for maintenance are most successfully implemented. Respondents to the consultation may wish to raise issues relating to the funding for courses operating outside of this model, such as clinical psychology training programmes. The Government will consider these in the context of its consultation response.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-05-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether there is a team within his Department with specific responsibility for children and young people’s mental health.

Alistair Burt

Yes, there is a team within the Department with specific responsibility for those areas of policy on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing for which the Secretary of State for Health is accountable.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-06-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what information his Department holds on which organisations have offered mental health support to veterans in (a) England, (b) Merseyside and (c) Liverpool in each year since 2010.

Mark Lancaster

In the UK, primary responsibility for the provision of healthcare, including mental healthcare, for veterans rests with the NHS in England and the Devolved Administrations. Funding of mental healthcare for veterans is a matter for the NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups in England and their equivalents in the Devolved Administrations. These bodies will hold information on the organisations providing mental healthcare to veterans in the UK.

The Ministry of Defence provides advice, information and signposting to support services for veterans though its Veterans UK web pages and free telephone helpline service and we encourage veterans wishing to seek help with mental health problems to visit: www.gov.uk/mental-health-support-for-the-uk-armed-forces or call the 24-hour veterans’ mental health helpline on 0800 138 1619.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-07-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 1 July 2016 to Question 40562, if his Department will publish details of which stakeholders it plans to engage with before publishing its response to the consultation on healthcare student funding.

Mr Philip Dunne

The healthcare education funding reforms is a transformative policy with cross-cutting implications for both health and education sectors. Through agreed governance arrangements, the Department of Health, the Department for Education and HM Treasury have worked with health and education partners ahead of publishing the Government response.

A list of respondents to the public consultation is included in the Government response published on 21 July 2016.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-09-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many deaths by suicide in each age group have been recorded within one month of being released from prison in England in each year since 2010.

Nicola Blackwood

This information is not held centrally.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-10-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the proportion of the population affected by (a) foetal alcohol syndrome and (b) foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in (a) Liverpool, Wavertree constituency, (b) Liverpool, (c) the Liverpool City Region and (d) England.

Mr Philip Dunne

The Department has made no estimate of the proportion of the population affected by Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) or Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) in England, regionally or locally.

The diagnosis for babies born with FAS may not be made easily at birth, and problems may present only later in childhood, for example at school. Estimates for the incidence of FASD are still more uncertain and relate to the lack of consensus on diagnostic criteria for these conditions.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to include in the Government’s mandate to NHS England for 2017-18 an explicit requirement to reduce premature mortality among people with autism.

David Mowat

NHS England is due to publish data from the Clinical Commissioning Group Improvement and Assessment Framework. These data, include indicators on mental health and learning disabilities that relate to the objectives set out in the mandate to NHS England. My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will publish his Annual Assessment of NHS England, including progress against the mandate objectives, at the end of this financial year. The 2017-18 mandate to NHS England, including agreed future objectives for NHS England, will be published in due course.

The ‘Think Autism’ Adult Autism Strategy for England set out a clear, cross-Government programme of action, developed with people with autism to improve lives, reduce premature mortality and reduce the health gap for people with autism. This would be achieved through better access to healthcare for people with autism and by making improvements to services. In January 2016, a cross-Government Report on progress on implementation of the Think Autism Strategy was published which set out new recommendations for going forward.

The Department is represented on the Study Steering Committee for the SHAPE (Supporting adults with High-functioning Autism and Asperger syndrome) project. This is a national study led by the Social Policy Research Unit at the University of York. Stage 1 of the project aims to describe and map provision of autism services in England which fulfil the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s description of a Specialist Autism Team. A report will be published shortly including information about the service models and care pathways which different localities have implemented.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many Band 7 NHS psychologists were employed in each year since 2010-11.

Ben Gummer

The attached table shows the number of Band 7 clinical psychology staff employed in the National Health Service in England each year from September 2010 to September 2015. The figures are taken from the NHS hospital and community health services monthly workforce statistics, which are published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre.