Tag: Sarah Wollaston

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to improve access to mental health services for children who have (a) been the victims of abuse and (b) experienced other trauma.

Alistair Burt

The information needed to link individuals who have experienced various forms of trauma with those who have experienced mental health problems is not collected centrally.

We are committed to improving child and adolescent mental health services, which is why we are investing an additional £1.4 billion in services for children and young people with mental health problems over the course of this Parliament. The guidance issued by NHS England in August last year on Local Transformation Plans for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing specified that the plans should address the full spectrum of need including those with particular vulnerability to mental health problems such as those who have been sexually abused or exploited. The bespoke assurance process that was undertaken by NHS England will therefore have addressed the extent to which this has been addressed in local plans.

NHS England has commissioned a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Local Transformation Plans, in order to support policy makers, local commissioners and services to understand and use the data that is contained within the plans to drive further improvements. Local Transformation Plans will be reviewed from a narrative, analytical and financial perspective, with thematic reviews carried out in key focus areas that align with Future in Mind principles.

Sensitive and routine enquiry will be introduced in targeted health services, such as sexual health clinics and mental health services, to help identify those children who have been subjected to abuse and other traumatic experiences.

NHS England also published a Commissioning Framework for Adult and Paediatric Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) Services in August 2015 which outlines the core services in SARCs and referral pathways to other services. These are now being rolled out throughout England and should lead to improved services for those who have experienced sexual assault, including children and young people.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the implications for his policies are of the findings in The Lancet Series on breastfeeding, published in January 2016; and what steps his Department is taking to increase breastfeeding rates.

Ben Gummer

Following the discontinuation of the Infant Feeding Survey, the Department has been exploring with Public Health England (PHE) and other key stakeholders alternative methods and sources of information to monitor the impact of its policy on infant feeding.

In future, the Maternity and Children’s Dataset will regularly capture data on breastfeeding initiation and prevalence from all women using NHS services rather than using a survey sample. This means that local service providers and commissioners can have up-to-date (e.g. quarterly) information about outcomes for their local populations, enabling service provision to be more agile, responsive and targeted.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme. Breastfeeding is also included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so that the improvements can be tracked, and action taken as needed.

Since 2010, we have recruited more than 2,100 additional midwives who will provide women with the information, advice and support they need with breastfeeding. A further 6,000 midwives are in training. There are also 3,400 more health visitors than in 2010.

The Department is working with PHE, NHS England and UNICEF to try and encourage women to breastfeed for the first six months, although we recognise that not all mothers choose to or are able to breastfeed.

Support and information is currently available to health professionals and parents through NHS Choices, the National Breastfeeding Helpline, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, the Start4Life Information Service for Parents and local peer support programmes.

The Department has not retained a record of how many full-time equivalent staff there were with a specific focus on breastfeeding between 2010 and 2016; breastfeeding policy has always formed part of the larger maternity policy for which the Department has the policy lead. Resources to cover this policy area would have fluctuated according the level of work required at any one time.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times in the last two years the Northern Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham has had staffing levels below what is considered safe.

Mr John Hayes

The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

Due to this inherent flexibility Her Majesty’s Coastguard sets ‘Optimum Suggested’ staffing for the network as a whole rather than for each centre. Over the last two years since the national network became operational out of a total of 1,427 watches (both day and night) the network has been staffed below ‘Optimal Suggested’ levels on 137 watches.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the coastguard turned down any request from any other service for assistance during inland floods in the last five years.

Mr John Hayes

Her Majesty’s Coastguard does not specifically record occurrences when other Category 1 Responders or any other service requests assistance. Information may be held within the text narrative of an incident record but this would require a check of tens of thousands of records over the last two to five years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to provide additional practice guidance on applying planning policy and legislation in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

James Wharton

The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is for decision makers to apply that policy and related legislation. The local planning authorities have responsibility for determining planning applications and developing local plan policies in the first instance.

The strong protection for these valued areas is supported by planning guidance. We keep this guidance under review to ensure it reflects up-to-date planning policy.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether, as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View, local sustainability and transformation plans should include measures to improve children and young people’s mental health; and on what outcomes they will be assessed.

Alistair Burt

Local health economies are developing a five year Sustainability and Transformation Plan which will set out how they will implement the Five Year Forward View in their area. They will identify and collectively agree the priorities to address over the next five years. We expect the improvement of children and young people’s mental health to be a key priority for many local health economies and NHS England will support these areas to develop transformative plans for these services. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be assessed through a new CCG assessment framework and their progress with transformation will be included.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to continue monitoring breastfeeding rates following the abolition of the infant feeding survey; and if he will make a statement.

Ben Gummer

Following the discontinuation of the Infant Feeding Survey, the Department has been exploring with Public Health England (PHE) and other key stakeholders alternative methods and sources of information to monitor the impact of its policy on infant feeding.

In future, the Maternity and Children’s Dataset will regularly capture data on breastfeeding initiation and prevalence from all women using NHS services rather than using a survey sample. This means that local service providers and commissioners can have up-to-date (e.g. quarterly) information about outcomes for their local populations, enabling service provision to be more agile, responsive and targeted.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme. Breastfeeding is also included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so that the improvements can be tracked, and action taken as needed.

Since 2010, we have recruited more than 2,100 additional midwives who will provide women with the information, advice and support they need with breastfeeding. A further 6,000 midwives are in training. There are also 3,400 more health visitors than in 2010.

The Department is working with PHE, NHS England and UNICEF to try and encourage women to breastfeed for the first six months, although we recognise that not all mothers choose to or are able to breastfeed.

Support and information is currently available to health professionals and parents through NHS Choices, the National Breastfeeding Helpline, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, the Start4Life Information Service for Parents and local peer support programmes.

The Department has not retained a record of how many full-time equivalent staff there were with a specific focus on breastfeeding between 2010 and 2016; breastfeeding policy has always formed part of the larger maternity policy for which the Department has the policy lead. Resources to cover this policy area would have fluctuated according the level of work required at any one time.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times one person has been left on (a) daytime and (b) night-time watch at Falmouth Coastguard Operations Centre in the last five years.

Mr John Hayes

The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

The network enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre or at any of the nine Coastguard Operations Centres to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast. Workload is managed on a national basis enabling national capability and resource to be available to support any Coastguard Centre when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

The number of watches when one Coastguard Officer has been on duty at Falmouth in the last five years is as follows:

(a) Daytime – 0

(b) Night Watches – 6.5

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many coastguard rescue teams have been deployed to inland flooding incidents in the past two years; and how many times those teams were called out to such incidents in the past two years.

Mr John Hayes

The capability to specifically record inland flood/civil contingencies flooding incidents has only been available in Her Majesty’s Coastguards Incident Management System since September 2014 as Coastguard Operations Centres transitioned incrementally into its national network. On the basis of the records available, at least 31 teams on 13 occasions have been deployed to inland flooding incidents in the past two years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what account will be taken of NICE’s clinical guidelines on levels of patient access in setting the budgets devolved by NHS England to clinical commissioning groups for obesity surgery from April 2016.

George Freeman

NHS England would expect commissioners to take account of this guidance when commissioning services.

Any transfer of budget from NHS England to devolved areas will be on the basis of existing contractual activity.

Before the transfer of services, NHS England will complete a data capture exercise, working with providers through the specialised commissioning hubs, to collect the current activity level. This will provide the basis for the transfer of the budget. Governance sign off will then be agreed at NHS England Board level.