Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what funding and support the NHS makes available to Williams syndrome patients and their families.

Individuals with Williams syndrome will need to be managed by a multidisciplinary team of specialists who can help support their medical, educational and social care needs.

The National Health Service allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) based on the needs of their population. Spending on specific conditions is down to local clinical priorities set by the CCGs themselves.

Higher Educational Institutions are responsible for ensuring the programmes they provide allow healthcare students to meet the outcomes set out by the regulators upon graduation.

The medical Royal Colleges have responsibility for developing postgraduate training curricula for doctors for approval by the General Medical Council (GMC).

Health Education England works with regulatory bodies such as the GMC, and the organisations that design curricula such as the medical Royal Colleges, to seek to ensure training meets the needs of patients.

Continuing Professional Development is the responsibility of individual practitioners and their employers.

The Government is working to improve the lives of all those affected by rare diseases through the implementation of the UK Strategy for Rare Diseases published in November 2013. The Strategy includes specific recommendations related to raising awareness of rare diseases and genomics across the healthcare professions. The Government is committed to implementing the Strategy by 2020.