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 tackle closed cultures in inpatient settings for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

Health and care providers have a responsibility to prevent and detect closed cultures and their systems for setting and monitoring culture and encouraging staff to speak up.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has developed ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance for services for people with a learning disability and autistic people which outlines the importance of ensuring a service’s model of care, policies and procedures are in line with the current best practice.

The CQC has increased its scrutiny and oversight of providers of support for people with a learning disability and autistic people. The CQC uses both the guidance and observation when regulating registered services, including the monitoring, assessing and inspecting of such services. As a result, the CQC has identified more closed cultures and has taken enforcement action to protect people.

NHS England has also established a three year quality improvement programme which seeks to tackle the root causes of unsafe, poor-quality inpatient care in mental health, learning disability and autism settings.

We are considering what else may also be needed to address quality wider issues for mental health inpatient care.