Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is very expert in this area, and I thank her for that interesting proposal. I should like to take it back to the teams in the department and write to her on that point, if that would be okay.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been told that the Government expect every health body to provide a seven-day specialist multidisciplinary service to prevent people with autism needing in-patient care. That has been government policy since 2015. In the last four years, there has been a 24% increase in autistic people without a learning disability being placed in mental health hospitals. What are the Government doing about this policy failure?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord raises an extremely important and difficult area of service. This is exactly why the Government have just launched a review of autism services, which is currently open for consultation. We are trying to improve these services as we speak.