Autism: Children
(asked on 17th March 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of support offered to the parents of autistic children (a) at and (b) after the point of initial diagnosis.
NHS Digital published statistics, on 14 November 2019, that present the number of new referrals to mental health services for which the referral reason was suspected autism, as well as their waiting times to first appointment. These are Experimental Statistics and have been published by NHS Digital to involve users and stakeholders in the future development of the data, including work to improve the quality of the data. The data is available at the following link:
The NHS Long Term Plan, published on 7 January 2019, commits to supporting people with learning disabilities or autism or both by improving diagnostic pathways, reducing over-prescribing of medicines, and ensuring people have access to high-quality care and support in the community.
Over the next three years, autism diagnosis will be included alongside work with children and young people’s mental health services to test and implement the most effective ways to reduce waiting times for specialist services. This will be a step towards achieving timely autism diagnostic assessments in line with best practice guidelines.
Included within the NHS Long Term Plan is a commitment that by 2023/24, children and young people with a learning disability, autism or both with the most complex needs will have a designated keyworker. In addition, together with local authority children’s social care and education services and expert charities, NHS England and NHS Improvement will jointly develop packages of support for autistic children and their families throughout the diagnostic process.