Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how his Department is planning to monitor the quality of local authority rehabilitation services for blind and partially sighted people across England.

Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are responsible for making sure people who live in their areas have access to timely, high quality and appropriate adult social care services, including specialist vision rehabilitation. The forthcoming Health and Care Bill will introduce the Department’s plans to develop an enhanced assurance framework to improve adult social care oversight across England. This includes a new duty for the Care Quality Commission to review and make an assessment of local authorities’ delivery of their adult social care duties to help drive quality and outcomes for care users.