Health Services: Disability

(asked on 14th December 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 10 December 2018 to Question 199449 on Health Services: Learning Disability, what his policy is on introducing a national disabled people’s healthcare strategy to help ensure parity of treatment for disabled people.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 19th December 2018

The Department is committed to ensuring that all disabled people, including those with a learning disability, have the same opportunities to access high quality healthcare as everyone else. Where necessary, all healthcare services should make reasonable adjustments to ensure this, in line with the requirements of the Equalities Act 2010 and the NHS Information Standard. We have no plans to introduce a national healthcare strategy for disabled people.

In the new year we will consult on the introduction of mandatory learning disability and autism training for health and care staff. This will provide for greater parity of treatment by ensuring that staff understand the needs of people with learning disability or autism and have the skills to deliver the most effective care and support to them.

Learning disabilities and autism are also one of the four clinical priority areas within the National Health Service long-term plan, which will also help to address the inequalities experienced by people with a learning disability or autism.

As of 30 November 2018, 914 reviews of deaths reported to the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review Programme (LeDeR) have been completed with a further 185 at the approval stage. The next annual report of the LeDeR programme is currently planned to be published before summer 2019 and will include data from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018. All local areas have access to findings from reviews taking place within them.

The Department does not assess complaints made to the National Health Service by people with a learning disability. The Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009 set out what local organisations must do in respect of complaint handling in the NHS. These regulations are designed to ensure that wherever possible complaints are resolved effectively at local level with lessons learnt to improve services.

As part of the implementation of the Learning Disability Improvement Standards, a data collection is being undertaken by NHS Improvement to better understand the key themes arising for people with learning disabilities accessing NHS care. As part of the data collection, which will close on 31 December, NHS trusts are expected to measure themselves against the Learning Improvement Standards and a number of metrics allied to each Standard. NHS Improvement has shared data from this collection with the Care Quality Commission to help inform their regulatory approach and identify where their support activity is best prioritised.

We have not made a formal assessment of whether the number of avoidable deaths of people with learning disabilities in the NHS has reduced. The aim of the LeDeR programme and the Learning Disability Improvement Standards is to ensure that NHS trusts and commissioners maintain a focus on avoidable mortality so that the deaths of people with learning disabilities thought to be due to problems in care are significantly reduced. The LeDeR programme is taking place within the context of the Government’s Learning from Deaths Programme and all acute, community and mental health trusts are required to review and publish locally the number of deaths thought to be due to problems in care on a quarterly basis, evidence of what they have learned through reviews and the actions taken to prevent such deaths in future on an annual basis.

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