Paediatric Care: Wating Times

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I am aware from personal experience that, when you have a child with neurodiversity or developmental needs, it is a long journey. We are seeing this manifest itself much more in recent years; I was talking to Minister Caulfield about this just this morning. One-to-one is always preferable but, where capacity is constrained, group education and help can sometimes lend themselves to this space. It is a long-term condition, and clearly it will not be solved by treatment over a few months but needs many years.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

The Minister quite rightly referred to the brain development of a child being very rapid and resulting from experience, and to various experiences having a profound effect on children’s development. However, he did not mention the place of primary care and, particularly, general practitioners in this. Does he feel that general practitioners are getting enough resources to be able to assess children on a more routine basis? The app will certainly be useful, but it does not get them clearly involved with medical practice; we need some standard way of doing this. Can he give us some information about the role of the GP?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The role of the GP is clearly vital. That is what I was trying to get behind in the Start for Life initiative and clear early warning indicators. Clearly, that needs to go right through the development of a child at different key stages along the way. On digital treatments, I was at Boston children’s hospital last week, and it has early indicators for dyslexia—for example, looking at pattern recognition via an app, as it is not until children are older that they can see letters. Similarly, early signs of neurodiversity can be seen in the way that children play online on certain apps. I think we can add some of these digital support tools, but clearly the GP has a primary role.