Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Spending Review 2020, what specific steps his Department is taking to improve maternity safety.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
£9.4 million has been provided to support maternity safety pilots through the 2020 Spending Review. The pilots will provide cutting-edge training and expert guidance, to improve practice and avoid harm to babies. This will include:
- Fresh learning from recent investigations and academic research to be used to improve clinical practice during childbirth;
- Pilots to provide cutting-edge training and expert guidance, to improve practice and avoid harm to babies; and
- Funding to also cover the costs of the final year of the Ockenden Review into maternity safety at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust.
The funding is in addition to existing funding to improve maternity safety by strengthening clinical leadership, implementing best clinical practice and fostering cultures of continuous learning for improvement through reviews and investigations.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) NHS workers and (b) social care staff have died from covid-19 since (i) March 2020 and (ii) September 2020.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Office for National Statistics publishes mortality data for deaths involving COVID-19 for healthcare workers and social care workers in England and Wales. The last iteration of this release showed that in England there were 305 deaths involving COVID-19 among healthcare workers and 307 deaths involving COVID-19 among social care workers.
These were registered between 9 March and 12 October 2020 in England, of those aged 20-64 years, using the last known occupation. The definition of healthcare workers used will include not only those employed in the National Health Service but wider healthcare sector workers.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to improve training and support for social care staff (a) on infection control and (b) in other areas.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Adult Social Care Winter Plan outlined the latest National Health Service clinical support offer, which includes support for care homes and social care through primary care and community services and the rollout of the Enhanced Health in Care Homes model; and professional leadership and expert advice on infection prevention and control where needed.
The Plan extended the Infection Control Fund until March 2021. This means we have now ringfenced over £1.1 billion for the care sector to take key steps to improve infection prevention and control.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many officials work in the correspondence unit in his Department.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Department’s Ministerial Correspondence and Public Enquiries (MCPE) unit has a baseline establishment of 51 staff. This is inclusive of correspondence, Freedom of Information (FOI), Subject Access Requests and the call centre.
In 2019 the Department received 29,800 correspondence cases and 1,068 FOI requests. This year, to 23 November 2020, we have received 69,555 correspondence cases and 2,326 FOI requests. This significant increase in volume has been driven by interest in the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to this the Department has temporarily increased resources in the MCPE unit and there are now 111 members of staff.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to assist (a) local authorities and (b) the NHS to implement integrated health and care services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Promoting integrated care is a priority for the Government. We have already made progress in facilitating integrated health and care services through the development of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). NHS England have set out their goal that all sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) will become ICSs by April 2021. So far, 18 out of 42 STPs have developed into ICSs.
The Better Care Fund (BCF) is the national policy driving forward the integration of health and social care in England. The BCF requires National Health Service clinical commissioners and local authorities to make joint plans and pool budgets for the purposes of integrated care, providing a context in which the they can work together, as partners, towards shared objectives.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to accelerate access to psychological therapies for adults with long-term common mental health conditions.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We continue to expand access to talking and psychological therapies through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Data from 2019/20 shows that there were 1.69 million referrals to IAPT in England and 1.17 million people started a course of treatment within this year.
In addition, we continue to meet our waiting time targets for IAPT. Latest figures for August 2020 indicate that 89.1% of people completing treatment waited less than 6 weeks against a target of 75% and 97.8% waited less than 18 weeks, against a target of 87.5%.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support is available for young people and adults who self-harm during the covid-19 pandemic; and how much the Government spent in (a) 2018, (b) 2019 and (c) 2020 on self-harm prevention.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We do not have data on how much funding was spent specifically on self-harm prevention in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
National Health Service mental health services have remained open for business throughout the pandemic. Our community, talking therapies and children and young people’s services have deployed innovative digital tool to connect with people and provide ongoing support. For those with severe needs or in crisis, all NHS mental health providers have established 24 hours a day, seven days a week mental health crisis lines.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much the NHS spent on support safety training for maternity staff in (a) 2018, (b) 2019 and (c) 2020 to date.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
National Health Service providers are responsible for delivering safe services and ensuring that staff receive the training they need to provide the highest standard of care.
Health Education England (HEE) allocated £420,000 to directly support maternity safety training in 2019/20. No funds were directly allocated to be spent on maternity safety training in 2018/19 or 2020/21 by the HEE maternity programme.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps is the Government is taking to ensure that the NHS is the safest healthcare system in the world for both patients and staff.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Government is clear in its commitment to improve the quality and safety of care and treatment across England.
NHS England and NHS Improvement published the NHS’s first ever Patient Safety Strategy in July 2019. The Strategy sets out a vision to continue to improve patient safety, building on the foundation of a patient safety culture and patient safety system.
A series of programmes are planned and underway to help create a safety culture in the National Health Service and to continuously improve the safety of patients in the NHS. For example, patients are being supported to contribute to their own safety by having patients or their advocates on all safety-related clinical governance committees in NHS organisations.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
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 mental health services for new fathers experiencing mental health difficulties during the perinatal period.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to expanding access to evidence-based psychological therapies within specialist perinatal mental health services so that they also include parent-infant, couple, co-parenting and family interventions.
Fathers and partners of women accessing specialist perinatal mental health services and maternity outreach clinics will be offered evidence-based assessments for their mental health and signposting to support as required. This will help the five to 10% of fathers who experience mental health difficulties during the perinatal period and increase access to evidence-based psychological support and therapy, including digital options, in maternity settings.