Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will improve the collection of data on (a) length of stay and (b) delayed transfers of care in children’s mental health in-patient units to facilitate the setting of effective targets.

Through its Getting It Right First Time programme, NHS England and NHS Improvement are currently working with all inpatient providers to review a range of data metrics, including length of stay. As part of this, meetings will be held with each provider to review length of stay in their units, to undertake benchmarking, identify outliers and agree areas for improvement.

The child and adolescent mental health services clinical reference group has also set up a data working group which will have a focus on length of stay to identify potential areas for improvement.

Delayed transfer of care data is submitted by all NHS England and NHS Improvement regional teams on a weekly basis so that there is a national overview. Robust and regular monitoring is undertaken by regional teams to track progress against discharge/transfer plans and processes are in place for escalating cases. The regional teams also review delayed transfers of care with providers as part of the routine contract monitoring arrangements and agree any necessary actions with them.