Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the potential implications for its policies of the findings of the Healthwatch publication, Accessible Information Standard: Findings from our evidence review, published in February 2022, on levels of (a) training and (b) awareness of the standard.

NHS England is responsible for the Accessible Information Standard (AIS), and has completed a review of the AIS considering a wide range of evidence to help ensure that the communication needs of people with a disability, impairment or sensory loss are met in health and care provision.

The review considered the effectiveness of the current AIS, how the standard is implemented and enforced in practice, and identified recommendations for improvement. One of the aims of the review was to strengthen assurance of implementation of the AIS, and a self-assessment framework has been developed to support providers of National Health Service and social care services to measure their performance against the AIS and develop improvement action plans to address gaps in implementation.

Following publication of the revised standard in due course, NHS England will continue work to support its implementation with awareness raising, communication and engagement and updated e-learning modules on the AIS to ensure NHS staff are better aware of the standard and their roles and responsibilities in implementing it. NHS England is developing the updated e-learning training modules on the AIS. NHS England has and will continue to work with the voluntary sector and those with lived experience to ensure that the modules are fully accessible, reflective of people’s experience in using services and cover a range of examples across health and adult social care. These actions should support better and more consistent implementation of the standard.