Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Lord Markham on 11 January (HL Deb col 1415), how Integrated Care Systems will ensure joined up provision between health, social care, and education for disabled children.

Integrated care systems are designed to join-up the commissioning of health, social care services and other system partners to meet the population health needs. These needs are assessed in the data-driven joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs), prepared by Health and Wellbeing Boards. Government guidance on the preparation of JSNAs states that they should include the needs of children with disabilities and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) within these assessments.

Integrated care partnerships (ICPs) must set out how local authorities and integrated care board (ICBs) can meet these assessed needs in integrated care strategies. Statutory guidance states that these strategies should consider the health and wellbeing outcomes of babies, children, young people and families and they should include a statement on how the arrangement of health and social care services can be closely arranged with health-related services such as education providers.

Furthermore, to ensure SEND duties receive sufficient focus in the ICB, NHS England statutory guidance will contain provision for the delegation of responsibility for these duties to ICB executive leads.