Barry Sheerman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Sheerman on 2016-03-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of representations that NHS England should conduct a national autism mortality review.

Alistair Burt

The National Health Service is taking action to increase the health checks and cancer screening programmes for people with learning disabilities, including those who also have autism. In 2015, NHS England commissioned the world’s first Learning Disability Mortality Review Programme to support local areas to review deaths of people with learning disabilities and to use the information to improve service provision so that physical and mental health problems can be identified and addressed. This programme is currently being piloted and will be rolled out more widely in due course.

We would expect that the work of the mortality review as a whole is likely to generate new information on the causes of premature mortality in all people with learning disabilities including many who will also have had autism spectrum disorder.