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 young people with cancer have equity of access to (a) age-appropriate and (b) specialist psychological support.

We are committed to getting the National Health Service diagnosing cancer earlier and treating it faster so that more patients survive. This includes children, teenagers and young adults (CTYA).

NHS England has published service specifications that set out the service standards required of all providers of CTYA cancer services. The requirements include ensuring that every patient has access to specialist care and reducing physical, emotional, and psychological morbidity arising from treatment for childhood cancer. The specifications are available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/group-b/b05/

Children’s cancer care is managed by principal treatment centres (PTCs) who ensure quality care. Each PTC has a multi-disciplinary team which meets at least weekly and includes a specific focus on the psychosocial needs of patient. The multi-disciplinary team ensures that each service user is assessed for psychological needs and can access any psychosocial support that is required.

The Department is also taking steps to improving waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment across all cancer patient groups in England. We will start by supporting the NHS to deliver an extra 40,000 scans, appointments and operations each week to ensure that patients are seen as quickly as possible.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has set out guidance for general practitioners on the symptoms of cancer in CTYA, recommending referral within 48 hours for those presenting with potential cancer symptoms. To support timely investigation after referral, we are working with the NHS to maximise the pace of the roll-out of additional diagnostic capacity, including via the roll out of community diagnostic centres.