Debbie Abrahams – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2016-05-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how his Department monitors the progress of organisations providing NHS or adult social care towards conforming to the Accessible Information Standard.
Alistair Burt
NHS England published the Accessible Information Standard in July 2015. Compliance with the Standard is a legal duty and organisations that provide National Health Service care or adult social care are required to implement the Standard in full by 31 July 2016. Compliance with the Standard is also a requirement of the NHS Standard Contract 2016/17.
NHS England does not hold information on how many NHS trusts conform to the Standard.
NHS England is not proactively monitoring progress of organisations that provide NHS or adult social care towards conforming to the Accessible Information Standard, as the Standard does not establish a new national audit or dataset which requires organisations to report centrally on their adherence. In addition, NHS England as an organisation does not have a monitoring or inspection remit.
However, the Standard includes requirements for organisations to publish or display an accessible communications policy which explains how they will follow the Accessible Information Standard, and an accessible complaints policy. The inclusion of these requirements is intended to support ease of compliance assessment by interested organisations, and to ensure that people with information and communication support needs are able to provide feedback to organisations about their experiences.
The specification for the Standard also makes clear that commissioning organisations must actively support compliance by organisations from which they commission services and must also seek assurance from providers in this regard.
In addition, the Care Quality Commission will look at evidence of how services implement the Accessible Information Standard as part of their inspection of health services and adult social care services when they make judgements about whether health services are responsive to people’s needs, and adult social care services are responsive to people’s needs and whether they are well led.
