Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 7 of the June 2019 report of the Children’s Commissioner, We need to talk: access to speech and language therapy, what plans he has to tackle local variations in spending on speech and language therapy; and how that spending will be monitored by his Department.
Communication support particularly benefits from a joint commissioning approach. The NHS Long Term Plan recognises the importance of speech and language therapists and proposes that local areas design and implement models of care that are age appropriate, closer to home and bring together physical and mental health services.
Since May 2016, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission are inspecting local areas on the effectiveness with which clinical commissioning groups and local authorities work together in joint commissioning arrangements, to support the needs of children with special educational needs and disability, which would include their commissioning of therapies.
We are keen to work with the Children’s Commissioner’s Office on the issues of expenditure data.