Asked by: Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
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 ensure that new mothers' mental health problems are identified as early as possible.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home.
The Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period. This includes access to psychological therapies and specialist community or inpatient care.
A key element of the programme is to increase awareness and skills across the workforce, supporting better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and consequently improved recovery rates. In addition, there are over 570 perinatal mental health visitor champions. Their role is to support health visitors with the identification and management of anxiety, mild to moderate depression and other perinatal mental disorders, and knowing when to refer on.
Asked by: Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the provision of psychological support for adults with muscular dystrophy and neuromuscular conditions.
Answered by Steve Brine
No specific assessment has been made. Guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has been published for a number of neuromuscular disorders, and where appropriate, the guidance makes recommendations about access to psychological and counselling support for patients. In addition, NHS England has also set out that specialised care for patients with neuromuscular disorders, such as muscular dystrophy, should provide access to psychologists and/or counsellors.
NHS England is also working with the Neurological Alliance in support of the new national Neurology Advisory Group, which is considering ways to reduce variation and drive improvement in neurological care. This includes looking at issues such as psychological support, which were recently raised in the report Parity of esteem for people affected by neurological conditions: meeting the emotional, cognitive & mental health needs of neurology patients, published by the Neurological Alliance on 5 July 2017.
Finally, as set out in Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published in July 2016, the expansion of psychological therapies services will require building skills and capacity in the workforce. This includes: top-up training in new competencies for long-term conditions (relevant to people with neuromuscular disorders and other long term health problems) and medically unexplained symptoms for current staff; targeted training in working with older people; and training new staff to increase overall capacity – such as the 3,000 additional mental health therapists located in primary care.
Asked by: Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase GP training to improve the detection of bowel cancer.
Answered by Steve Brine
The standard of medical training is the responsibility of the General Medical Council (GMC), which is an independent statutory body. The GMC has the general function of promoting high standards of education and co-ordinating all stages of education to ensure that medical students and newly qualified doctors are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes essential for professional practice. Continuing professional and personal development for registered professionals employed in the National Health Service is a matter for employers and those individuals.
Asked by: Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department takes to monitor adherence to waiting-time standards for suspected bowel cancer.
Answered by Steve Brine
Maintaining and improving patient access standards, including the eight cancer waiting times standards is a key objective of the Mandate to NHS England in 2017/18. NHS England has set out their approach to meeting and improving patient access standards in the ‘Next steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View’ which was produced in partnership with organisations including NHS Improvement.
The Department uses performance data published on a monthly basis by NHS England to monitor compliance with the cancer waiting times standards and there are robust processes in place to hold NHS England and NHS Improvement to account for performance and ensure compliance with the cancer standard is discussed in the course of this process.
The latest data for September 2017 showed that the National Health Service is meeting seven out of the eight cancer waiting times standards. The data can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waiting-times/