Tag: Luciana Berger

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 11 January 2016 to Question 21142, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times.

Alistair Burt

Pursuant to my answer and as announced by the Prime Minister on 11 January, we are providing a further £247 million over the next five years to provide 24-hours, seven days a week liaison psychiatry services in accident and emergency (A&E) departments to support people who attend A&E, who may have mental ill health, to ensure they are assessed and receive the most appropriate treatment.

We are making additional resources available to the National Health Service to deal with increased demand in A&E departments by backing the NHS Five Year Forward View with £10 billion a year real terms additional funding by 2020-21, compared to 2014-15, with £3.8 billion real terms growth in 2016-17.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support his Department makes available for people who are returning to work after a period of ill health.

Justin Tomlinson

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has developed Fit for Work to help people who are returning to work after a period of ill health. Fit for Work provides both a supportive occupational health assessment and general health and work advice to employees, employers and General Practitioners (GPs), to help individuals stay in or return to work.

People who have been unemployed due to ill health may be also eligible for support from a number of other programmes, including:

• Work Choice, which is a specialist disability employment programme that provides tailored support for disabled people who face barriers to finding and retaining work

• Specialist Employability Support (SES), which was launched in 2015, is a new national provision, designed to help unemployed disabled adults with the most complex needs to secure and sustain employment or self-employment.

• The Work Programme, which allows providers the flexibility to design an innovative and personalised approach to help participants back into sustained employment.

Additionally, an individual who is returning to their current job or a new job after a period of ill health may be eligible for support from Access to Work, which is a discretionary grant scheme that offers financial awards for in-work support for people whose disability or health condition affects the way they work.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January 2016 to Question 23676, how much funding has been allocated to the HEE Perinatal Mental Health programme in each year since 2010.

Alistair Burt

Health Education England (HEE) was formed in 2013. For data since 2013, HEE does not have information at this level. HEE has various workforce development programmes managed through its thirteen local offices that might support perinatal mental health, but information on expenditure is not collected to this level of detail.

HEE has a mandate commitment to ensure that trained specialist mental health staff are available to support mothers in every birthing unit by 2017. And a further mandate commitment requires HEE to work with the Royal Colleges to support perinatal mental health training being incorporated into the postgraduate training syllabus for doctors by 2017.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance is issued to (a) mental health professionals and (b) GPs on the relationship between vitamin B12 and depression-like symptoms.

Alistair Burt

The issuing of clinical guidance to healthcare professionals is the responsibility of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the relevant Royal Colleges and professional associations.

General practitioners (GPs) are usually the first health professional an individual will see when in contact with health services. GPs should be familiar with the signs, symptoms and complications, including psychiatric abnormalities, of vitamin B12 deficiency and with the methods for diagnosing and treating it. Guidance is available from sources commonly consulted by GPs, including Clinical Knowledge Summaries and Patient.co.uk.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to monitor implementation of the duties in the Children and Families Act 2014 on local authorities to (a) identify, (b) assess the needs of and (c) provide whole family support for young carers from April 2016.

Edward Timpson

Section 96 of the Children and Families Act 2014, which came into force in April 2015, imposes a duty on local authorities to to “…take reasonable steps to identify the extent to which there are young carers within their area who have needs for support.” Once a young carer has been assessed, the local authority must consider whether the child has needs that could be met by services provided under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, that is, whether they should be supported as a child in need.

The Department currently supports the Carers Trust to help local authorities and voluntary sector partners to embed good practice, including good practice surrounding whole family support. This approach is intended to ensure effective, joined up, support with the potential to offer a single point of professional contact for young carers and their families. We will draw on the learning from that work when considering further action.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to ensure that the expansion of parenting programmes will be integrated with local transformation plans for children and young people’s mental health services.

Alistair Burt

The Government has accepted the recommendation in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published February 2016, to review the best way to ensure the expansion of the parenting programme announced by the Prime Minister in his Life Chances speech. The Department for Work and Pensions is currently considering how to implement this and further thought will be given as to how it fits with local plans for the transformation of children’s and young people’s mental health services.

It is for local areas to consider and commission services based on the needs of their local population. In general, family support is the responsibility of local government. Local Transformation Plans produced in each area of the country set out how they plan to meet the full spectrum of needs of children and young people with mental health problems, and what services should be put in place to address these. The Children and Young Peoples Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme, which is being expanded to cover the whole country and extended into other clinical areas including meeting the needs of children aged 0-5, already includes parenting programmes for children with conduct disorders.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-24.

To ask the Attorney General, what account the CPS takes of mental health conditions when deciding whether to prosecute people under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Robert Buckland

The Crown Prosecution Service is committed to taking into account the mental health condition of an offender when considering bringing a prosecution. Each case is considered on its merits, taking into account all available information about any mental health issues, and their relevance to the offence, in accordance with the principles set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors (the Code).

The Code explains that there is a balance to be struck between the public interest in diverting a defendant with significant mental illness from the criminal justice system and other public interest factors in favour of prosecution, including the need to safeguard the public.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the progress of the Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme’s service transformation programme.

Alistair Burt

The Government’s transformation programme for children and young people’s mental health is aimed at improving children and young people’s mental health and providing additional support for those who experience mental health problems. The Children and Young People’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP IAPT) programme includes training for professionals working in child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) partnerships to put the patient at the centre of their treatment: young people agree goals and milestones with the professional, and participate in their care through regular feedback and outcome monitoring. The benefits of this approach are well-evidenced.

Unlike the adult programme, CYP IAPT does not create new services; it transforms CAMHS partnerships by training people to deliver evidence-based interventions so that those working in CAMHS do so in collaboration with children, young people and families, in every aspect of care and service design through better participation and regular feedback and outcome monitoring.

At present, 78% of young people aged under 19 are covered by CAMHS partnerships which are working to transform services by embedding the CYP IAPT principles, and the programme is being rolled out to cover the whole of England by 2018. The programme is currently developing a number of new curricula to address training gaps that have been identified during its implementation. These include interventions for 0-5 year olds, evidence-based counselling, combination therapy (pharmacology and psychological interventions), Learning Disabilities and Autistic Spectrum disorder, and staff working in inpatient settings.

A recent rapid deep dive audit of 12 partnerships within the programme showed:

― improved access through self-referral routes, single point of access, outreach services, evening and weekend appointments;

― compared to a national sample of mental health services in the United States, teams in services working with CYP IAPT had more proficient organisational cultures and more functional organisations;

― more efficient time between referral and assessment decreased by 73%;

― number of days between assessment and discharge decreased by 21%; and

― The percentage of closed cases by mutual agreement increased by 22%.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the (a) number and (b) proportion of clinical commissioning groups that commission mental health services specifically for older adults.

Alistair Burt

No estimate has been made of the number and proportion of clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) that commission mental health services specifically for older adults. All CCGs will have a cohort of older adults for whom there is mental health services provision. In recent years there has been a trend towards ageless mental health services.

However, one of the recommendations in the Mental Health Taskforce report The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health published by NHS England in February this year is that bespoke older adult services should be the preferred model until such time that general adult mental health services can be shown to provide age-appropriate care.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the recommendations in the Royal College of Nursing’s report, Connect for Change: an update on learning disability services in England, published in February 2016; and if he will make a statement.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England (HEE) is working with NHS England and other national partners to set out a far-reaching plan to transform services for people with a learning disability, to make significant and lasting improvements to their care and lives. This work is currently focused on supporting the transforming care programme and spreading the lessons learnt from engagement with fast-track sites.

HEE is predicting an increase of between an additional 1,126 and 1,778 whole time equivalent (WTE), learning disability nurses by 2020 being available to the National Health Service. The range between these figures is the uncertainty over employer’s ability to retain the current workforce. Both of these figures are in addition to the baseline 3,904 WTEs working in the NHS, resulting in a forecast supply of between 5,030 and 5,682 WTEs by 2020. This is in excess of the forecasts made by NHS employers as to the number they believe they will need and therefore could meet demand from other sectors.

The Department commissioned Skills for Health, Skills for Care and HEE to develop a Learning Disabilities Core Skills Education and Training Framework, which will be launched in May and is aimed at all health and social care workers who have not received training in learning disabilities, especially those nurses from other fields of nursing such as adult, children and mental health nurses.