Young Adults with Spinal Injuries

Helen Whately Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)]

I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for securing this debate and for her powerful speech telling us about Tom Lazarides’s experience, his tragic accident and his injury. I welcome his family, who the hon. Lady said are here in Parliament today. I offer them my sincere condolences on the loss of Tom, who sadly died in November 2023.

I listened carefully to the hon. Lady’s speech, although I did not have advance sight of her comments, and I will do my best to respond. I assure her that I am happy to write to her with further details about the points she has raised this afternoon. I am responding as the Minister with oversight of continuing healthcare and discharge, so I will be able to say more on those points. Particularly in her summing up, she talked more generally about care for people with spinal injury, which can have such a devastating impact and can mean that a person needs a great deal of care from multidisciplinary NHS teams.

I could go into the way NHS England commissions services for spinal cord injuries—there is a national specification and a range of support—but I think I could make better use of the time today by picking up on the question of continuing healthcare and the discharge situation, which the hon. Lady outlined. She described how Tom’s family feel that the system failed him and his clearly complex health needs as a result of his injuries. She described the long time he spent in hospital and the long-term rehabilitation he needed, which meant he needed significant ongoing clinical care. She described how he was considered for continuing healthcare and the experience of the eligibility assessment, and how Tom and his family felt it did not take into account his injuries and health conditions, and did not take full account of his medical records. She described how he and the family were then told that he was not eligible. They subsequently and rightly appealed, and I heard how difficult the hon. Lady said that process clearly was for the family and for Tom, with the lack of transparency, the uncertainty, and the feeling that meetings happened without them and their involvement. I heard how Tom felt under pressure to move into a care home, when he really wanted to live well at home. All of us can completely understand that. Anyone, whether a young person such as Tom or someone of old age, wants to live as independently as possible, whatever their health needs at home. I also heard about the experience with discharge to assess.

Clearly, a process is in place for accessing NHS continuing healthcare. The intention of the process is to consider the individual’s clinical needs, the combination of those needs and how they come together, and therefore to assess whether somebody is eligible. The intention is to design a package of care around the individual to support them where they wish to live, be it at home or in a care home. First, a checklist is used, which leads to someone having an eligibility assessment. If I understood it correctly, Tom experienced and went through the eligibility assessment, but, as the hon. Lady mentioned, the initial decision was that he was not eligible. I am happy to make some inquiries. As a Minister, I cannot make a call on any particular decision that is made on an individual, but clearly I want always to be assured that the right process has been followed. It is probably helpful if, with the help of officials, I try to seek some further information outside the Chamber from the hon. Lady to see what I can do to understand fully what happened and to be assured as to whether there is anything we need to do to make the process work better, particularly in the circumstance that she has described, where somebody such as Tom has clearly had some severe injuries. I am also happy to meet her and Tom’s family to understand this process better.

The hon. Lady raised a point about discharge to assess and how it did not work for someone with a catastrophic injury. Again, we should pick that up in a conversation outside the Chamber. In general, the purpose of discharge to assess is a good one: to avoid people having long and unnecessary stays in hospital, where we know that frail and elderly people, in particular, are likely to decondition and live less independently as a result. She knows that well from the work that she does on social care. Once somebody has been discharged home, they are often able to live with more independence and regain mobility in a way that was not clear when they were assessed in hospital. Sometimes assessment in hospital will lead to delays and a longer stay in hospital, and to what is called over-prescription, with somebody ending up living longer in a care home when they might have continued at home. In general, discharge to assess is a good thing but, as I say, I am happy to look into the specific question of whether there might be circumstances, such as when somebody has had a very serious injury, when the process works differently. I will take that away.

The hon. Lady made a point about the involvement of patients in decisions about their care. It is fundamental that patients should be involved in decisions about their care, as should families and carers. In many circumstances, the patient and those around them will be the experts on what they will need. They need to be involved in the ramifications of whatever decisions are made. That should take place, but let us investigate further outside the Chamber whether that is working as it should be, together with the points she made about transparency and trying to ensure that people are involved when continuing healthcare is being assessed and considered.

I receive a significant amount of correspondence about continuing healthcare. The NHS has a challenging job to ensure that the decisions go the right way. I know the process can be long and hard for those involved in it. I want to ensure it works as well as it possibly can, so that those who should be eligible receive such care. I understand in Tom’s case that, after the appeal, the decision was made that he should be receiving continuing healthcare. How sad that that came after his death and after all the suffering that he and those close to him must have gone through.

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing Tom and his family’s situation to my attention. I commend her for her powerful speech and how clearly she put across the concerns. I look forward to speaking about this further outside the Chamber.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I pass on the deepest condolences of everybody here at the House of Commons to Tom’s family, friends and all who mourn his passing. It was a very moving speech.

Question put and agreed to.