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 10 February 2016 to Question 26077, on suicide: females, if he will make it his policy to collect that information centrally.
Alistair Burt
There are currently no plans to make the collection of this information a policy.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications for the policies of the Cabinet Office of the recommendations of the Mental Health Taskforce report, published in February 2016.
Alistair Burt
We welcome the recommendations for government in the report and will be considering how best to integrate them into our work programme. There will be an impact on policies across Government in this period and, more importantly, a positive impact on people using mental health services.
The Mental Health Five Year Forward View Taskforce Report proposes, and we accept, investing over £1 billion of additional funding by 2020/21 to reach one million more people. There are a number of recommendations in the report which will have an impact on crisis care services, accident and emergency departments, mothers suffering from mental health problems, suicide prevention, children and young people’s mental health services, access to psychological therapies and the physical health of people with mental health problems. The £1 billion announced with the Taskforce report is the total annual cost for all areas in 2020/21.
Announcements on the development of policies, including those with reference to implementing the Mental Health Taskforce will be made in due course.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in England with severe mental illness are registered with a GP; and how many such people had an annual physical health check in each year since 2010.
Alistair Burt
This information is not available in the format requested.
The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is published annually, and includes mental health indicators, which capture information on patients with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other psychoses and other patients on lithium therapy. The information captured does not relate specifically to whether patients have received an ‘annual physical health check’, but does include counts of those patients who have a record of blood pressure, alcohol consumption, or body mass index (BMI).
The relevant indicators are available from the year 2011/12. The data in the table below are snapshots as at 31 March of the reporting year.
Number of patients included in the QOF mental health register with records of blood pressure, BMI and alcohol consumption – England 2011/12 – 2014/15
|
Year |
Register1 |
BP record2 |
Alcohol consumption record2 |
BMI record2 |
|
2014/15 |
500,451 |
350,751 |
345,730 |
.. |
|
2013/14 |
483,933 |
354,146 |
337,603 |
336,373 |
|
2012/13 |
470,971 |
369,223 |
356,519 |
352,501 |
|
2011/12 |
452,608 |
355,834 |
335,922 |
335,652 |
Notes:
1. For the years 2013/14 and 2014/15, ‘register’ includes all patients with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other psychoses and other patients on lithium therapy. For the years 2011/12 and 2012/13, ‘register’ includes all patients with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other psychoses.
2. Blood pressure record, alcohol consumption record and BMI record include all those patients with schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder and other psychoses who have a record of blood pressure, alcohol consumption and BMI respectively in the preceding 12 months for the years 2013/14 and 2014/15, and in the preceding 15 months for the years 2011/12 and 2012/13.
Due to the changes in the definitions of the register and indicators, the data from 2013/14 onwards are not comparable with data prior to this time.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre do not recommend using the figures provided to calculate percentages, for the following reasons:
― The register for 2013/14 to 2014/15 includes ‘other patients on lithium therapy’, while the blood pressure, alcohol consumption and BMI records do not consider these patients.
― The indicators are published as achievement scores in QOF; the calculation of these proportions includes consideration of exclusions and exceptions as defined in the framework, which are not reflected in the numbers presented here.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the mortality rate of people with mental health issues has been (a) nationally and (b) in each local authority in each year since 2010.
Alistair Burt
Information on the mortality rate of adults under 75 years old with serious mental illness in England and in each local authority in England between 2010/11 and 2013/14 is given in the attached table Mortality rate of people with mental health issues in (a) England and (b) in each local authority in England between 2010/11 and 2013/14.
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.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has undertaken a gender impact assessment of its mental health strategies.
Alistair Burt
This Department undertakes impact assessment analysis when developing and implementing policies. Part of this assessment is the analysis of equalities issues, including gender.
For example, mental health strategy No health without mental health A cross-government mental health outcomes strategy for people of all ages was published in February 2011 and was accompanied by an analysis of the impact on equality.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to implement recommendation 8 in the executive summary of Public Health England’s March 2015 report entitled, Public mental health leadership and workforce development framework, on working with relevant colleges, faculties and boards overseeing professional training to include mental health within public health curricula.
Jane Ellison
Public Health England (PHE) has worked with the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), Royal Society for Public Health and Royal College of Psychiatrists in developing and implementing the public mental health leadership and workforce development framework. More recently the Royal College of Nursing, Chartered Institute for Environmental Health (CIEH), Association of Directors of Public Health (ADPH) and Institute for Health Visitors have endorsed the framework and signed up to its Call to Action. Mental health has been made a presidential priority for the FPH, CIEH and ADPH. PHE has provided information and guidance to inform the recent FPH curricula review, the Public Health Skills and Knowledge Framework review and the new Mental Health Skills and Knowledge Framework. PHE has also presented the framework to the United Kingdom People in Public Health Board, Skills for Care Mental Health Board, Health Education England Mental Health Advisory Board and the forthcoming Health Education England Public Health Advisory Board.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-04-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has a team with specific responsibility for addressing women’s mental health.
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 2016-04-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his Department’s target was for the number of qualified mental health trust inspectors in each year since 2010; and how many such inspectors were employed by the Care Quality Commission in each of those years.
Ben Gummer
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England and is responsible for identifying its own staffing requirements and recruiting suitably qualified people. The Department has not set the CQC targets for the recruitment of inspectors. The CQC has provided the following information.
The term ‘qualified mental health inspector’ is not one that is used by the CQC. Part of the person specification used in the recruitment of new inspectors for mental health services is that applicants have a background in mental health, learning disability, or substance misuse.
The CQC is only able to provide figures from April 2014 onwards. Prior to this, the CQC inspectors were not organised into specialist teams and were simply classified as “inspectors”. The CQC planned to recruit 149 inspectors by April 2016.
Number of full time equivalent mental health inspectors employed by the CQC
|
1 April 2014 |
29.5 |
|
1 April 2015 |
70.6 |
|
1 April 2016 |
126.5 |