Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that people with Parkinson’s receive their medication on time.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve support for autistic adults.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We are committed to supporting autistic people to live healthy, independent lives and to participate in their local communities. We are currently reviewing our cross-Government autism strategy and extending it to include children and young people. The Government expects to publish the revised all age autism strategy by the end of the calendar year.
Learning disability and autism are one of the clinical priorities in the NHS Long Term Plan which was published on 7 January 2019. The Plan has a renewed focus on supporting people with learning disabilities or autism or both by improving diagnostic pathways, reducing over-prescribing of medicines, and by ensuring people have access to high-quality care and support in the community.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to (a) update GP guidance and (b) increase GP awareness of the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
General practice is where most patients with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) are likely to be managed, and the condition is identified as a key area of clinical knowledge in the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) content guide. The AKT is a summative assessment of the knowledge base that underpins general practice in the United Kingdom within the context of the National Health Service and is a key part of GPs’ qualifying exams.
In 2007, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published the clinical guideline, ‘Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy): Diagnosis and management of CFS/ME in adults and children. This sets out best practice in the diagnosis, treatment, care and support of people with the condition
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for mental health (a) referrals and (b) treatment.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone who has a mental health need is able to access timely treatment based on their clinical need.
We have made ambitious commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan to make mental health services available to an extra 380,000 adults and 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 by 2023/24.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to test and roll out comprehensive waiting time standards for adults and children over the next decade. This builds on the already established waiting time standards for children and young people’s eating disorder services, early intervention for psychosis that covers all ages and adult improving access to psychological therapies services which are all being met or on track for delivery by 2020/21 in line with previous commitments.
Specific waiting times targets for emergency mental health services will take effect from 2020.
The ongoing NHS clinical review of standards has reported its interim findings which set out a number of proposed future waiting time standards for testing in mental health. These include:
- assessment within 24 hours for urgent community referrals;
- seen by liaison psychiatry in accident and emergency within 1 hour from referral;
- four week waiting times for children and young people to access specialist mental health services; and
- four week waiting times for adults to community mental health teams.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will add the six-week maternal postnatal check to the GP contract.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
An agreement on whether additional items will be included in the 2020/21 general practitioner (GP) contract – such as the inclusion of a specific universal maternal six-week postnatal check – will be made following negotiations between NHS England and the GP profession later this year. No decisions have been made on which issues are to be included in the negotiating remit.
Post-natal care can be delivered by a number of different providers, including midwives, health visitors and GPs. Currently, commissioners and providers should ensure that women are offered a review of their physical, emotional and social wellbeing by a healthcare professional at the end of the postnatal period (between 6-8 weeks). National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on postnatal care stipulate that a documented, individualised postnatal care plan should be developed with the woman ideally in the antenatal period or as soon as possible after birth.
The NHS Long Term Plan highlights that we will continue to work with midwives, mothers and their families to implement continuity of carer so that, by March 2021, most women receive continuity of person caring for them during pregnancy, birth and postnatally.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what financial incentives are available to his Department to help increase the number of people applying for medicine courses.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government does not consider that there is a requirement for national financial incentives as undergraduate medicine is a competitive subject to gain entry to. For 2018/19 entry, there were around three applicants to every place. Universities and medical schools may choose to offer local scholarships or financial awards to students which would cover or contribute to the cost of tuition fees. These may be targeted to students that are currently under-represented in medical education.
More generally, all higher education providers wishing to charge higher level fees must have an access and participation plan agreed with the Office for Students. In these plans, providers must set out the measures they intend to put in place to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups to access and then successfully participate in higher education.
For the first four years of an undergraduate medical degree, eligible students can access from Student Finance England (SFE) tuition fee support, a loan for living costs and other supplementary grants if applicable. From the fifth year of their course, medical students are able to apply for the National Health Service bursary to help with tuition fees and living costs. They can also apply for a non-means tested reduced rate living cost loan from SFE in the fifth year of their course.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to reverse the decision to remove nurse bursaries.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 4 March 2019 to Question 226753.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if the Government will make it its policy to reinstate nurse bursaries.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government has no plans to reinstate the bursaries for nursing degrees and is committed to increasing uptake of the additional places these reforms have made available.
The intention of the funding reforms was to unlock the cap which constrained the number of pre-registration nursing training places, and to allow more students to gain access to nurse degree training courses, creating a sustainable model for universities and securing the future supply of homegrown nurses to the National Health Service. In support of the reforms, we announced additional clinical placement funding to make available 5,000 more nurse training places each year from September 2018 and 3,000 more midwifery training places over the next four years.
Students on the loans system are at least 25% better off than they were under the previous bursary system. In recognition of the additional costs that the healthcare students incur in order to attend the mandatory clinical placement, the Government introduced the Learning Support Fund, a £1,000 per student, per year for child dependent allowance, reimbursement of all travel costs above their usual daily travel and up to £3,000 per year for exceptional hardship. These payments are in addition to the allowances on the student loans system.
On 7 February, the University and College Admissions Service published full-time undergraduate nursing and midwifery applications made by the 15 January deadline. This data showed a 4.5% increase in applicants to undergraduate nursing and midwifery courses at English providers. We are working with Health Education England and the university sector to ensure students continue to apply for these courses this year and in future years.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ensure that social care receives a real terms increase in funding in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Social care funding for future years will be settled in the spending review, where the overall approach to funding local government will be considered.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
‘To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many subject access requests have been made to GP surgeries since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation.
Answered by Steve Brine
This information is not held centrally.