Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to promote good mental health among deaf people.

Promoting good mental health is a key strategic objective of Public Health England’s (PHE) public mental health programme, alongside preventing mental illness and improving the lives of those living with mental illness. PHE’s ambition is that everyone has the ability to achieve good mental health, which includes those who are deaf or have hearing loss.

During 2015, PHE has published a framework for building workforce skills in order to promote good mental health; a guide to evidence-based approaches for developing mentally healthy communities; and established the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, an independent centre dedicated to making policies and services work for wellbeing, all of which underpin PHE’s ambitions in this area.

At a local level, health and wellbeing boards are responsible for developing an analysis of the current and future health and care needs of the local population through their Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNA). Health and wellbeing boards, and the JSNA process that they oversee, offer valuable opportunities to drive improvements in meeting the needs of local people who are deaf or have a hearing impairment.

An increasing number of councils are seeing investment in public health as an investment in both physical and mental health. This includes ensuring that all major public health programmes consider and assess the impact on mental health.

Department of Health officials have begun identifying and taking forward actions on how we can provide therapeutic support to Deaf people. In the meantime, we expect clinical commissioning groups to recognise the importance of commissioning Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services that are accessible to British Sign Language users and Deaf people more generally.