The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had on training and registering support dogs for people with mental health problems.
Alistair Burt
The Department has not had any discussions with assistance dog organisations on the training and registration of support dogs for people with mental health problems.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-01-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Prime Minister’s speech of 11 January 2016, on life chances, how the waiting time target for patients with psychosis will be monitored; and when the first results of that monitoring will be published.
George Freeman
The Early Intervention Psychosis access standard will be monitored via the new Mental Health Service Dataset which is managed and reported against by the Health and Social Care Information Centre.
As this is a new collection, reporting will be phased starting with basic counts in March 2016 and building in detail as quality is assured. In the meantime NHS England has implemented a bespoke collection to monitor progress against the referral to treatment element of the standard, the first report of which is likely to be available in March 2016.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to raise awareness of B12 vitamin deficiency.
Jane Ellison
The Department raises awareness of B12 vitamin deficiency through the NHS Choices website. It provides a comprehensive web-based health information service and provides advice on areas such as health and diet, including a section on vitamin B12.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance states that information about awareness, diagnosis and treatment of vitamin B12 deficiency should also be provided by public health care professionals.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to improve suicide prevention policies in response to the statistics on suicides in the UK, 2013 Registrations, published by the Office for National Statistics on 19 January 2016.
Alistair Burt
The Government has invested over £1.5 million on suicide and self-harm prevention research since the National Suicide Prevention Strategy to inform and target our strategy for reducing suicide rates.
In January last year, we asked local areas to aspire to an ambition of zero suicides, to raise awareness around mental health and suicide prevention in particular.
We are in the early stages of discussions about re-invigorating the National Strategy to drive local delivery. We are developing those plans for this, and will make an announcement shortly.
The highest cause of death in young men and women in England is death through suicide, and rapid skilled response through a well-publicised access route is essential to reduce mortality. The NHS111 Mental Health Programme has been set up specifically to improve services and NHS England is working with Mind and the Telephone Helplines Partnership to develop a training course designed by people with lived experience specifically to support 111 call handlers deliver the best possible response in times of crisis.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 5 January 2016 to Question 20189, what steps he plans to take to ensure that the thematic review and future monitoring of the Future in Mind policy address the needs of young carers to have more support for their mental health.
Alistair Burt
The purpose of the thematic review is to provide a qualitative assessment of how the Local Transformation Plans (LTPs), covering every clinical commissioning group (CCG), align with the Future in Mind principles to improve children and young people’s mental health, including the needs of young carers. It also aims to, where possible, identify local approaches that could inform future service planning and design in other areas to further improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
As set out in NHS England’s guidance to support the development of LTPs an integral part was for CCGs to include a tracking template that sets out local progress milestones and financial spend. This tracker will be used as the basis for assurance assessment in 2015/16, and from 2016/17 onwards progress on local transformation will become part of the mainstream planning assurance process to ensure the successful delivery of the transformation of children and young people’s mental health.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many and what proportion of (a) all children and (b) children with mental health conditions aged five to 16 have conduct disorder.
Alistair Burt
Data on the number and proportion of children aged 5–16 years diagnosed with a conduct disorder is not routinely collected centrally. The most recent survey, Mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, 2004, published by the Office for National Statistics in 2005, showed that 5.8% of children aged five to 16 had conduct disorders. This represents 60.4% of the 9.6% of children with any mental health disorder at that time.
However, the Department is commissioning a new national prevalence survey of children and young people’s mental health – the first since 2004. The survey will estimate the extent of mental ill health in the 2-19 year old population. Final publication of findings is expected in 2018.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many adult inpatient psychiatric beds there were in England in each year since 2010.
Alistair Burt
The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is shown in the following table.
Average daily availability and occupancy rate1 for consultant-led beds open overnight in the mental health sector, in each quarter from 2010-11
|
Quarter |
Number of available beds open overnight |
Occupancy rate |
|
2010-11 Q1 |
23,515 |
87.1% |
|
2010-11 Q2 |
22,929 |
86.7% |
|
2010-11 Q3 |
23,740 |
85.9% |
|
2010-11 Q4 |
23,607 |
86.6% |
|
2011-12 Q1 |
23,253 |
86.8% |
|
2011-12 Q2 |
23,208 |
86.8% |
|
2011-12 Q3 |
23,016 |
87.2% |
|
2011-12 Q4 |
23,121 |
87.2% |
|
2012-13 Q1 |
22,550 |
87.5% |
|
2012-13 Q2 |
22,269 |
88.3% |
|
2012-13 Q3 |
22,496 |
87.2% |
|
2012-13 Q4 |
22,268 |
88.6% |
|
2013-14 Q1 |
22,109 |
88.3% |
|
2013-14 Q2 |
22,025 |
89.2% |
|
2013-14 Q3 |
21,931 |
88.1% |
|
2013-14 Q4 |
21,731 |
88.6% |
|
2014-15 Q1 |
21,750 |
89.8% |
|
2014-15 Q2 |
21,618 |
89.6% |
|
2014-15 Q3 |
21,446 |
89.4% |
|
2014-15 Q4 |
21,374 |
89.5% |
|
2015-16 Q12 |
18,569 |
89.9% |
|
2015-16 Q2 |
19,249 |
89.1% |
|
2015-16 Q3 |
19,273 |
88.6% |
Source: Bed availability and occupancy, NHS England
Notes:
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-02.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all GPs are trained in awareness of learning disabilities.
Ben Gummer
It is the responsibility of the General Medical Council (GMC) to set the standards and outcomes for education and training and approve training curricula to ensure newly qualified general practitioners are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care. This includes training in awareness of learning disabilities.
Higher Education Institutions are responsible for ensuring the programmes they provide allow healthcare students to meet the outcomes set out by the GMC upon graduation.
The royal colleges, for example the Royal College of General Practitioners, also have responsibility for developing curricula for general practitioners, in particular postgraduate curricula.
Health Education England (HEE) works with bodies that set curricula such as the GMC and the royal colleges to seek to ensure training meets the needs of patients.
HEE is undertaking a review of curricula of all National Health Service commissioned training programmes to include recognised areas of health including learning disability, mental illness, physical illness and physical ill health and social support needs. HEE will work with regulatory bodies including the GMC to agree the standards and content for education and training; this is anticipated to be completed by April 2017.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what public information leaflets and literature have been published by (a) his Department and (b) NHS England on mental health.
Alistair Burt
The Department has published a number of information leaflets and other literature, as have NHS England. These documents are available on the Government and NHS England websites:
https://www.gov.uk/search?q=mental+health
and
https://www.england.nhs.uk/?s=mental+health
“
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of schools employ a mental health specialist as a permanent member of staff.
Mr Sam Gyimah
This is a matter for schools to decide. We have recently commissioned an extensive survey which will provide nationally representative estimates of what provision schools and colleges offer for mental health and character education. The fieldwork will begin in the summer term.
We are also contributing to a £3 million joint pilot with NHS England for training single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services, to ensure that children and young people have timely access to specialist support where needed.