Down's Syndrome

(asked on 16th December 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what training is given to healthcare practitioners for notifying parents that their baby has Down's syndrome.


Answered by
 Portrait
Ben Gummer
This question was answered on 5th January 2016

It is the responsibility of the professional regulators to set the standards and outcomes for education and training and approve training curricular to ensure newly qualified healthcare professionals are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care. This includes ensuring healthcare professionals have the appropriate skills to effectively and sensitively communicate with patients or their family members.


Providers of Care Quality Commission regulated services are required to ensure that their staff have the qualifications, competence, skills and experience which are necessary for the work to be performed by them. If they work regularly with people with learning disabilities, they will be expected to have sufficient knowledge of that subject area.


The Care Certificate, which was introduced in April 2015, is helping NHS service providers to ensure that their new healthcare assistants have the right fundamental skills and knowledge, including in communication and awareness of learning disability.


Healthcare providers also have a duty to invest in the training and education of their staff. Health Education England will work with healthcare providers to ensure that the continuing personal and professional development of staff continues beyond the end of formal training to enable staff to deliver safe and high quality healthcare and public health services both now and in the future.


The Department does not issue guidance on how healthcare professionals should communicate specific information, or collect data on staff that have received specific communication training. Which staff have certain responsibilities, for example notifying parents that their baby has Downs Syndrome, will be determined by their employer as part of agreeing their job role.

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