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 improve patient safety for people with learning disabilities.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is committed to advancing patient safety and fostering a learning culture across the National Health Service. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will usher in a new era of transparency, a rigorous focus on high-quality care for all and a renewed emphasis on patient and staff voice.

The Patient Safety Incident Reporting Framework (PSIRF) is a patient safety approach within the NHS covering all patient groups, including people with a learning disability. It sets standards for how organisations should meaningfully and compassionately engage with those affected by safety events and guides organisations on responding effectively for learning and improvement.

PSIRF emphasises the importance of considering inequalities when setting priorities and supports consideration of inequalities throughout the learning response process.

Where a person has a learning disability, integrated care boards can also utilise the findings from a Learning from Lives and Deaths Review to understand how services can be improved across their local system to reduce health inequalities for people with a learning disability and autistic people in their area.

Additionally, a range of wider action is being taken to improve patient safety for people with a learning disability and autistic people. This includes:

• The Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Inpatient Quality Transformation programme has been co-produced with key stakeholders from across systems and aims to improve the quality of care in mental health impatient settings.

• We are also rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism across the health and adult social care workforce. This will help to ensure that staff have the right knowledge and skills to provide safe and informed care.

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