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 ensure that patients with both ADHD and Autism receive a bespoke and holistic healthcare plan that follow pathways for both conditions.

In July 2021, we published a new national autism strategy aimed at improving care and support for autistic people. The strategy promotes the implementation of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidelines on autism, which set out expectations for clinical commissioning groups in relation to autism and managing co-occurring conditions. The guidelines ‘Autism spectrum disorder in under 19s: recognition, referral and diagnosis’ and ‘Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis and management’ set out that autism assessments should consider and assess for co-occurring conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

These assessments should be used to develop a profile of people’s needs with the aim of developing care and management plans. NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with local authority children’s social care, education services and charities to develop packages to support autistic children and children with ADHD and their families throughout the diagnostic process.