Tag: Luciana Berger

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS (a) doctors and (b) nurses have been signed off work due to (i) stress and (ii) other mental illness in each of the last five years.

Ben Gummer

The Department does not collect centrally data on how many doctors and nurses have been signed off work due to stress and other mental illness.

Employers across the National Health Service are responsible for reducing staff absences due to stress and mental illness through local sickness absence policies.

NHS England recently launched "A healthy NHS workforce"[1], a commitment in its Five Year Forward View[2] "to ensure the NHS as an employer sets a national example in the support it offers its own staff to stay healthy".

Working with Public Health England and NHS Employers, NHS England aims to improve NHS staff health spearheaded by a group of provider and commissioner organisations. Work will include ensuring board level leadership and engagement as well as line manager training to increase awareness of mental health issues, helping them manage staff in a way which is supportive to health and wellbeing.

The Department continues to commission NHS Employers to help trusts improve staff mental health and wellbeing through advice, guidance and good practice[3].

The launch in July of NHS Employers’ How are you feeling NHS? Toolkit[4] enables staff to talk more openly about their emotional health, helps trusts improve the assessment of the impact emotional wellbeing has on staff and patients and supports action planning to improve staff emotional health and wellbeing.

[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/2015/09/02/nhs-workplace/

[2] https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5yfv-web.pdf

[3] http://www.nhsemployers.org/search-results?q=supporting+staff+who+are+experiencing+mental+health+issues

[4] http://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/retain-and-improve/staff-experience/health-work-and-wellbeing/protecting-staff-and-preventing-ill-health/how-are-you-feeling-nhs-toolkit

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much of the funding distributed by NHS England to improve eating disorder services has been spent; and what that funding has been spent on.

Alistair Burt

For 2015/16, NHS England has distributed £30 million to clinical commissioning groups in order to improve services for children and young people with eating disorders. The funding will be used to reduce waiting times and to improve the way in which services are delivered for people with eating disorders. A specific aim is to move towards providing specialist care on an out-patient basis so that fewer young people will need admission to hospital. The expectation is this will improve outcomes and allow more young people to receive treatment closer to home.

Clinical commissioning groups have led the development of Local Transformation Plans for Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing that include plans for how the eating disorder allocation will be spent. The deadline for submission was Friday 16 October and the plans are being assured by NHS England’s regional assurance teams. Expenditure will be monitored against the plans over the remainder of the financial year.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions (a) he and (b) officials in his Department have had with the Department for Work and Pensions on the time taken to discharge patients from mental health inpatient care due to delays in the payment of benefits.

Alistair Burt

There have been no discussions between the Department and the Department for Work and Pensions at either ministerial or official level about the time taken to discharge patients from mental health inpatient care due to delays in the payment of benefits.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to prepare for the introduction of the waiting time standards for eating disorder services by 2020.

Alistair Burt

NHS England and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health published on 3 August 2015, a commissioning guide for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) that will set out how to implement the access and waiting time standard for children and young people with an eating disorder.

The standard is for treatment to be received within a maximum of four weeks from first contact with a designated healthcare professional for routine cases and within one week for urgent cases. In cases of emergency, the eating disorder service should be contacted to provide support within 24 hours.

The guidance is supported by £30 million of recurrent funding, which NHS England has already distributed to CCGs.

The ability of services to meet this standard will be monitored in 2016. The standard will be refined for implementation from 2017–18. From 2017, NHS England will set a minimum proportion of young people referred for assessment or treatment that are expected to receive treatment within the standard’s timeframe. Data collected in 2016 will help inform incremental percentage increases, with the aim of 95% of patients being treated within the standard’s timescale by 2020.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what public information campaigns his Department funds on perinatal mental illness; and how much such campaigns cost.

Alistair Burt

Perinatal mental illness is an important topic area covered by the Start4life NHS Information Service for Parents (ISP) which is led by Public Health England. The service includes information about health and wellbeing and includes short videos on how to spot the signs of perinatal mental illness and how to seek further help.

Advice is also included in emails at key stages of pregnancy and post birth for both parents.

The Start4Life ISP was developed as a universal NHS-branded resource to help provide support and advice for expectant and new parents. The service provides regular emails and text messages during pregnancy and for the first three years of a child’s life.

The total Start4life ISP programme budget in 2014/15 was £2 million and in 2015/16 it is £2.3 million. This is used to promote a range of relevant health messages for new parents and parents to be through the Information Service for Parents, the Start4Life website and other channels including materials for healthcare professionals to use with families, online advertising and social media.

Information is also available online via NHS Choices and can be found here:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/feeling-depressed-after-birth.aspx

“

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of support provided by the third sector in supporting people with eating disorders.

Alistair Burt

The Department has not made a formal assessment, but we greatly value the role of the voluntary sector in providing support for children and young people with mental health needs, and work closely with a number of leading charities at a national level and throughout the system.

NHS England is responsible for the approval and assurance of clinical commissioning group (CCG) plans for locally-commissioned services, including services for people with eating disorders.

In line with guidance published by NHS England in August, CCGs have produced Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) for children and young people’s mental health with their local partners, including those in the voluntary sector, in line with the proposal in Future in mind. The deadline for receipt of these LTPs was 16 October and they are now being considered by NHS England.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) submitted a local transformation plan for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing before the first-wave deadline of 18 September 2015; and how many CCGs have still to submit such a plan.

Alistair Burt

31 local transformation plans, representing 54 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were submitted by the first wave deadline of 18 September. A total of 102 plans are expected to be submitted by 16 October representing the remaining 155 CCGs.

CCGs were given two opportunities to submit plans – on the 18 September and 16 October 2015. The first submission date is in recognition that some CCGs were advanced in their plans for local improvement and already had a Children and Adult Mental Health strategy and plan in place. It is expected that the vast majority of submissions will have been received by 16 October 2015.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what basis his Department took the decision to remove from the NHS Constitution the phrase ‘psychological therapies’ from the drugs and treatments that have been recommended by NICE; and what discussions his Department has had with NICE on steps to address the lack of parity in the way interventions for mental and physical health are addressed.

Alistair Burt

There has never been a specific reference to psychological therapies in the NHS Constitution.

For the most recent update, we did consult on whether to include a right to psychological therapies, as part of the wider right to drugs and treatments that have been recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). However, the right to drugs and treatments reflects the legal funding requirement that applies to interventions recommended by NICE technology appraisal guidance. NICE has not been asked to undertake a technical appraisal of psychological therapies, so we decided that the most sensible outcome was to not include the phrase “psychological therapies” in the Constitution as it would otherwise risk confusion.

There have been no specific discussions with NICE on parity of mental and physical health interventions. The majority of new drugs and significant license extensions, including for mental health conditions, are referred to NICE for the development of technology appraisal guidance. Ifin the future psychological therapies are recommended in NICE technology appraisal guidance and consequently mandated for use in the NHS, we will consider consulting once again on including a right to psychological therapies within the Constitution.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what provisions are in place to support and promote the mental wellbeing of the NHS workforce.

Ben Gummer

Employers across the National Health Service are responsible for the mental health and wellbeing of their staff.

The Department commissions NHS Employers to help trusts improve staff mental health and wellbeing through advice, guidance and good practice[1].

In addition, trusts have access to local data from the NHS Staff Survey, the staff Friends and Family test as well as local information to help them develop and implement local improvement plans.

The recent launch of the How are you feeling NHS?[2] Toolkit by NHS Employers is aimed at enabling staff to talk more openly about their emotional health, improving the assessment of the impact emotional wellbeing has on staff and patients and enabling action planning to improve staff emotional health and wellbeing. Since it launched on 29 July it has had more than 16,000 views.

[1] http://www.nhsemployers.org/search-results?q=supporting+staff+who+are+experiencing+mental+health+issues

[2] http://www.nhsemployers.org/your-workforce/retain-and-improve/staff-experience/health-work-and-wellbeing/protecting-staff-and-preventing-ill-health/how-are-you-feeling-nhs-toolkit

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many adults received consultant-led mental health treatment in each of the last 10 years; what proportion of people receiving mental health support received consultant-led treatment in each such year; and what proportion of those people received that treatment within 18 weeks of referral in each such year.

Alistair Burt

Information on the number of people in contact with mental health services including those of whom who were in contact with consultant led services between 2011/12 and 2014/15 is given on the attached table The number of people in contact with mental health services and, of those, the number who were in contact with consultant led services 2011/12 -2014/15.

Mental health services are delivered by multidisciplinary teams with clinicians from various professional backgrounds working together in the delivery of care.

Information on the proportion of people who received consultant-led mental health treatment within 18 weeks of referral is not held centrally.