Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her department are taking to work with Integrated Care Boards to ensure that every Neighbourhood Health Service has sufficient specialist menopause expertise to deliver high-quality and accessible care.

The Renewed Women’s Health Strategy, published in April, identifies menopause as a core women’s health priority and shifts menopause care into primary and community settings, including neighbourhood women’s health services and women’s health hubs, making care easier to access and closer to home.

Each region will have a specialist centre to support group-based clinics in women’s health, such as menopause services, improving access, peer support and consistency, with early rollout focused on areas of highest need. Integrated care boards (ICBs) will be responsible for commissioning these specialist centres.

ICBs are also responsible for assessing the workforce needs of their local population and for commissioning services with the workforce and skills mix required to meet that need.

The Renewed Women's Health Strategy commits to developing a skills framework for women's healthcare in community settings, which will set out the capabilities needed to deliver care at basic, intermediate and advanced levels, including for menopause. This framework, once completed, will be shared with ICBs to map their existing workforce and skills, and plan for a workforce that matches clinical need.

In the future, our vision is that every neighbourhood will provide proactive, specialist and preventative women’s health care that complements and extends the primary care offer.