Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people aged under 18 have presented at accident and emergency departments in need of treatment for self-harm at hospitals in the Greater Birmingham area in each of the last five years.

The information is not available in the format requested.

Information on the number of accident and emergency (A&E) attendances for 0-17 year olds, with a patient group of deliberate self harm and with a primary care trust (PCT) of treatment within Greater Birmingham in each of the last five years, is shown in the following table:

Notes:

1. Self-harm:

A&E Patient Group - a code that indicates the reason for the A&E episode. Group 30 indicates those attending because of intentional self-harm. There were no A&E attendances recorded with a patient group for deliberate self-harm for Wolverhampton PCT in 2009-10. Patient group is a non-mandatory field and nil entry may indicate that the PCT did not submit any data for patient group for this year.

2. PCT of main provider:

This indicates the PCT area within which the organisation providing treatment was located. The following PCTs were identified as having an A&E department located within Greater Birmingham:

5PG - Birmingham East and North PCT

5PE - Dudley PCT

5MX - Heart of Birmingham Teaching PCT

5M1 - South Birmingham PCT

5M3 - Walsall Teaching PCT

5MV - Wolverhampton City PCT

Data for Sandwell and Solihull PCTs is not included due to the PCTs not submitting A&E data to Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) for the time period covered.

3. PCT of treatment 2013-14 data:

Although PCTs ceased to exist after 31 March 2013, HES A&E data for 2013-14 still contains data for PCT of treatment. The relationship between providers and their respective PCTs as at the end of 2012-13 has been propagated through to 2013-14 data to allow the relevant PCT to be reported, continuing a time series.

4. Provisional data:

The data is provisional and may be incomplete or contain errors for which no adjustments have yet been made. Counts produced from provisional data are likely to be lower than those generated for the same period in the final dataset. This shortfall will be most pronounced in the final month of the latest period, ie November from the (month 9) April to November extract. It is also probable that clinical data are not complete, which may in particular affect the last two months of any given period. There may also be errors due to coding inconsistencies that have not yet been investigated and corrected.

5. Accessing growth through time (A&E):

HES figures are available from 2007-08 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage and changes in National Health Service practice. For example, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care.

6. Official Source of A&E data:

HES is not the official source of total A&E activity, this is the NHS England situation reports collection:

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ae-waiting-times-and-activity/

However, HES permits further analysis of A&E activity as there are a range of data items by which HES can be analysed.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES),Health and Social care Information Centre (HSCIC)