Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the working group to examine the commissioning and provision of psychological therapies will examine neuro and neuropsychiatric services.

NHS England (NHSE) commissions community deaf services for adults and children and young people.

There are four Children and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHs) deaf community services as follows:

- North of England based in York, with outreach teams in Manchester and Newcastle;

- Midlands based in Dudley, with outreach services in Oxford and Nottingham;

- London and South East with outreach teams based in Cambridge and Maidstone;

- South West based in Taunton.

Adult community services are linked to the inpatient units and are based in:

- Newcastle (covering North East England and Cumbria);

- Manchester (covering North West England);

- Birmingham (covering the Midlands); and

- London (covering London and the South East).

There are three adult inpatient services covering NHS England:

- Manchester – John Denmark Unit;

- Birmingham – Jasmine Unit; and

- London – St Georges Hospital.

NHSE also commission:

- A low secure service in the North West of England;

- Medium secure in-patient services in North West and Northampton;

- A high secure service in Rampton Hospital.

Finally, Corner House, Springfield Hospital in London is a national CAMHs in-patient service.

Departmental officials are arranging a meeting to take place in the coming weeks with key stakeholders to discuss the progress and next steps in improving the provision of mental health services for deaf people.

NHSE is developing a new ‘accessible information standard’ which will provide clear guidance to health and social care organisations on the steps they need to take to ensure that disabled patients, carers and service users receive information in appropriate formats and communication support, if they need it. This will include the provision of interpreters or British Sign Language users for deaf people.

NHSE has also worked closely with SignHealth in the development of the standard and SignHealth have offered advice about particular aspects of the standard which relate to deaf people.