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 reduce waiting times for children requiring an assessment for autism in Nottinghamshire.

We expect integrated care boards (ICBs), including Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB, to have due regard to relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on autism when commissioning services for children and young people requiring an autism assessment. On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance for autism assessment services. These documents will help the National Health Service to improve their autism assessment services and improve the experience for children who are referred to an autism assessment service.

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB has been working closely with commissioned providers to increase their capacity and reduce the waiting times for assessments, whilst it reviews the wider children and young people neurodevelopmental pathway. This will identify areas of improvement and the necessary actions required to ensure Nottinghamshire has the right provision, with the right levels of commissioned capacity in place, that best meets the needs of its children and young people in a timely manner.

Relevant work has included reviews of pre-assessment services to reduce inherited waiting lists and the length of waiting times, with a focus on the referrals process, triage assessment and parenting support, additional non-recurrent funding to increase capacity to reduce backlogs, appointing additional Specialist Practitioners, and to increase the capacity of Community Paediatric teams and recurrent funding for additional Consultant Psychologists.