Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to NCEPOD's report entitled Joint Care? A review of the quality of care provided to children and young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, published on 13 February 2025, whether he will take steps to implement the recommendations of that report as they relate to recognition of juvenile idiopathic arthritis by healthcare professionals.

The Department has not yet considered the recommendations of the report published by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death on 13 February 2025, Joint Care? A review of the quality of care provided to children and young adults with juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

NHS England Specialised Commissioning has a Clinical Reference Group for specialised paediatric rheumatology, which has produced a service specification for these services. This service specification names juvenile idiopathic arthritis as one of the conditions that should be managed by a specialist paediatric rheumatology team. The service specification also sets out that specialised paediatric rheumatology teams will provide transitional care to facilitate transfer and ongoing care in adult rheumatology. Transitional care planning will involve paediatric rheumatology teams, adult rheumatology teams and local hospitals under a shared care arrangement. Specialised paediatric rheumatology services are expected to be commissioned in line with this service specification.

In the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England committed to delivering a service model for people aged between zero and 25 years old to improve young people’s experience and health outcomes. To aid implementation of this model, the Children and Young People’s Transformation Programme collaborated with key partners to develop national guidance on how the National Health Service can better support young people transfer into adolescent and adult services. The guidance is due to be published shortly and will be hosted on the NHS England website.

The policy aligns with existing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines and outlines the principles and steps of a service model for people aged between zero and 25 years old, along with best practice examples from across the country.

NICE’s published guidance on the transition from children’s to adult services for young people includes recommendations on transition planning, support before and after transfer and the development of transition infrastructure. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng43