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 increase the accessibility of the NHS for autistic people.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Under the Health and Care Act 2022, from 1 July 2022, Care Quality Commission-registered providers are required to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism appropriate to their role. This will help to ensure that staff have the right knowledge and skills to provide safe and informed care. To support providers to meet the statutory training requirement, we have been rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to the health and adult social care workforce. Over two million people have now completed the e-learning module, which is the first part of the training.

To make it easier for disabled people to use health services, there is work underway in NHS England to make sure that staff in health settings know if they need to make reasonable adjustments for people. This includes the development of a Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag, which enables the recording of key information, including if a person is autistic, and their reasonable adjustment needs, to ensure support can be tailored appropriately.

In June 2024, NHS England published a Health and Care Passport guidance and template which aims to support personalised care to autistic people including when they go into hospital or access any health or care services.

Since 2016, all National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers are expected to meet the Accessible Information Standard (AIS), which details the recommended approach to supporting the information and communication support needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment or sensory loss. NHS England has been undertaking a review of the AIS to help ensure that the communication needs of people with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss are met in health and care provision. A revised AIS will be published in due course. In the meantime, the current AIS remains in force and therefore there should not be a gap in provision for people using services.

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 the protection of autistic people in pandemics.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Ensuring that the United Kingdom is prepared for a future pandemic is a top priority for the Government, and we are embedding lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in our approach to pandemic preparedness. We aim to have flexible, adaptable, and scalable capabilities that can respond to any infectious disease or other threat, rather than relying on plans for specific threats. The strategic approach to pandemic preparedness recognises the disproportionate impacts that pandemics can have on particular people and groups.

The Government’s response to module one of the COVID-19 inquiry sets out the changes we have made to risk planning and data management to help ensure that we reduce potential unequal impacts on particular groups or individuals and targeting support where it can be of best help in civil emergency planning and management. The response is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-government-response-to-the-covid-19-inquiry-module-1-report

The Department commissioned independent research by the Policy Innovation Research Unit into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on autistic people and their families, which was published in May 2021 and is available at the following link:

https://piru.ac.uk/research/completed-projects/covid-19-impact-on-autistic-people-in-the-uk.html

More broadly, we are taking steps to improve the accessibility of services and information for autistic people. To make it easier for disabled people to use health services, there is work underway in NHS England to make sure that staff in health settings know if they need to make reasonable adjustments for people. This includes the development of a Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag, which enables the recording of key information about a patient, including if a person is autistic, and their reasonable adjustment needs, to ensure support can be tailored appropriately.

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