Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Care Quality Commission's report, Sexual safety on mental health wards, published in September 2018, what plans he has to make additional funding available for Mental Health Trusts to train the workforce in safeguarding patients from sexual incidents in the ward setting.

It is essential for staff, providers and national bodies to ensure the sexual safety of people using mental health inpatient settings. Sexual abuse of any kind is completely unacceptable.

The Department and system partners have accepted the recommendations of the Care Quality Commission’s report on ‘Sexual Safety on Mental Health Wards’ in principle and are currently working together to plan for swift action to address the report’s findings, including considering financial resourcing.

Health Education England (HEE) is committed to contributing to the education and training of staff to enable them to have the right skills, and confidence, to identify and effectively manage inpatient sexual safety incidents. In response to the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) report, HEE intends to develop a sexual safety core skills framework and develop an eLearning module on sexual safety.

We expect allegations related to sexual incidents on mental health wards to be taken extremely seriously, and police should be informed as necessary. As the CQC report identified, joint working between providers and other agencies, such as the police, is vital. National partners, including the CQC, NHS Improvement, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, will be working together to contribute to implementation of the CQC’s recommendation that “Providers should work collaboratively with stakeholders, including patients, the police and safeguarding teams, to ensure that sexual safety incidents are taken seriously and addressed appropriately”.