Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to (a) review and (b) update the guidance entitled Children and young people’s continuing care national framework, published on 22 January 2016.

The National Framework for Children and Young People’s Continuing Care, published by the then Department of Health, now the Department of Health and Social Care, in January 2016 is intended to support good practice locally, providing guidance for integrated care boards (ICBs) and local authorities on the process for assessing, deciding, and agreeing packages of care for children and young people.

There are currently no plans to review or update the Children and Young People's Continuing Care National Framework.

ICBs are responsible for the provision and commissioning of services to meet the needs of their local populations. NHS England supports ICBs to implement the National Framework for Children and Young People’s Continuing Care, and it has now started to collect Children and Young People’s Continuing Care activity data as part of the All-age Continuing Care Patient Level Dataset which launched on 1 April 2025, and which is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/all-age-continuing-care-data-set/about-the-all-age-continuing-care-data-set