Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of issuing statutory guidance to NHS commissioning bodies to ensure that they commission counselling and psychotherapy professionals to provide specialist support for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence from accredited registers.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is working with the Home Office and other partners across the Government on a new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. There are no current plans to issue any such guidance to National Health Service commissioners.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will issue guidance to NHS commissioners on commissioning qualified counselling and psychotherapy services as part of the specialist support provided to survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is working with the Home Office and other partners across the Government on a new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. There are no current plans to issue any such guidance to National Health Service commissioners.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’ Oral Statement of 30 June 2025 on Welfare Reform, if he will provide a breakdown by (a) location and (b) roles of the additional 6,700 mental health workers.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on the National Health Service’s Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) workforce in England. This includes data on the NHS mental health workforce employed by NHS provider trusts and integrated care boards. The information presented in the debate following my Rt Hon Friend, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions’ oral statement on welfare reform detailed the change in the NHS’s mental health workforce between the 30 June 2024 baseline and the data for 30 April 2025.
Within the NHS Monthly Workforce Statistics series, data on the mental health workforce is included in the file titled Preliminary – NHS HCHS Workforce Statistics, Trusts and core organisations – data tables, April 2025, which is available at the following link:
Tab 21 within the file presents information on the mental health workforce broken down by both staff groups and regions, showing how the total has increased over time.
The definition of the HCHS mental health workforce includes those who are providing or supporting the provision of mental health services. Staff are included if they have either an NHS Occupation Code or Area of Work code that is related to mental health services. Further information on the mental health workforce definition, including a list of the relevant Occupation Code and Area of Work variables, can be found on the National Workforce Data Set guidance page, at the following link:
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of funding his Department is providing to the (a) Best Start in Life strategy and (b) Best Start Family Hubs.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Best Start in Life strategy makes it clear that the integration of health services within Best Start Family Hubs is critical to raising the healthiest generation of children ever, and to ensuring that every child has a happy and healthy start to life. Additionally, the strategy commits the Government to:
- strengthening early childhood health services;
- improving maternity and newborn care;
- strengthening health visiting services;
- making it easier to get vaccinated;
- supporting healthy eating;
- tackling tooth decay; and
- giving parents and health professionals easier access to child health information.
The Department is working to provide clarity on future funding and spending plans, including preparing for the first multi-year planning round for the National Health Service in years.
The vision for Best Start Family Hubs goes hand in hand with the move to neighbourhood health services set out in the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan, and the three radical shifts from hospital to community, from analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the extension of the PINS programme on children with developmental language disorder.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools (PINS) programme covers all neurodivergence and so includes developmental language disorder. An independent evaluation of the PINS programme is underway. This evaluation will thoroughly explore the implementation and outcomes of the PINS programme, including to what extent the programme may have supported children with developmental language disorder. Interim findings from this evaluation are expected in autumn 2025 and will be published in accordance with Government Social Research protocol.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she plans to give emotional support animals the same legal status as guide dogs.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Standards for assistance dogs are currently and historically maintained on the basis of a voluntary regulatory framework. There is no specific legislation for the regulation of assistance dogs and no legislation is planned.
There are recognised standards for assistance dogs worldwide set by international bodies by which a number of UK charities and organisations are accredited. Assistance dogs are also provided by other charities and private sector organisations, including owner trainers, which are not accredited by international bodies.
Assistance dogs might be regarded as such, if they serve to mitigate disabilities and have sufficient training to warrant public access. The Equality Act 2010 defines a disabled person as someone with a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. This definition is central to the Act, which aims to protect people from discrimination based on disability.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has produced guidance for businesses and service providers on assistance dogs. This guidance states that, “dependent on the specific facts and circumstances in each case, it may be a reasonable adjustment to give access to a disabled person’s Emotional Support Animal. Service providers should develop a policy that is inclusive and allows for consideration of individual circumstances”.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing annual statistics on the number of children who miss education due to long term illness; and if she will publish statistics on the child's (a) region, (b) age, (c) ethnicity, (d) gender and (e) type of illness.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The department collects data on children missing education from local authorities. The latest data, including breakdowns by geography, characteristic and length of time missing education, is published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-missing-education/2024-25-autumn-term. This includes data by region, age, ethnicity and gender.
The department does not yet publish data on physical health or mental health as a primary reason for children missing education. However, these fields have been added to the aggregate termly local authority data collection for the first time beginning autumn 2025 and will be included in the next official statistics release.
Data on pupil absence is collected via the school census and the latest publication is here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england/2023-24. Reasons for absence are included in the publication, including the illness rate.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department is taking steps to update the Government's loneliness strategy, entitled, A connected society: a strategy for tackling loneliness, published on 15 October 2018.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to supporting people to have the social connections they need. This is a key part of achieving wider government priorities across health, community cohesion, and supporting young people. Rather than a standalone strategy for tackling loneliness, we are embedding this important issue in wider government strategies, including the new National Youth Strategy which is due to be released in the autumn. The National Youth Strategy will set out a new long-term vision for young people and an action plan for delivering this.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s statutory guidance entitled Children missing education - Statutory guidance for local authorities, updated August 2024, when she plans to update the guidance; and if she will make it her policy to regularly update the guidance to adapt to emerging trends and needs as indicated by new data collected.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The department conducted a call for evidence from 18 May to 20 July 2023 on ‘Improving support for children missing education’ to understand the sector’s current approach to identifying and supporting children missing education (CME), and to inform any changes which will help us to improve this support.
To address current challenges in identifying and supporting CME, the department has already:
Following the call for evidence, the department is reviewing its CME guidance with a view to publishing an updated version in due course.
Asked by: Jess Asato (Labour - Lowestoft)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to support schools to develop timetabling expertise in order to enable more flexible working patterns for teachers (a) who are mothers and (b) generally.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The department is taking action to support and promote flexible working in schools for all teachers and leaders. We have published non-statutory guidance alongside our flexible working toolkit, which includes practical resources to help leaders implement flexible working and to support school staff to request it. We have also clarified the position on planning, preparation and assessment time, so that schools are aware that teachers can use this time more flexibly. This can include taking it in a single chunk of time, or working from home, where the school deems this operationally feasible.
The department is also funding support for teachers and school leaders. We are delivering a culture change programme, focused on embedding flexible working in schools and multi-academy trusts (MATs). This programme allows schools to access support to overcome the perceived or practical barriers they face to implementing flexible working. This includes peer support provided by flexible working ambassador schools and MATs, and the delivery of supportive webinars, including several specifically addressing how timetabling can support flexible working.
Our programme also offers practical support on combining flexible working with life as a parent and has a range of tailored content such as a webinar on making a flexible working request when returning from parental leave.