Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-03-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase the skills of nurses relating to treatment of people with learning disabilities.
Ben Gummer
It is the responsibility of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) to set the standards and outcomes for education and training and approve training curricula to ensure newly qualified nurses are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care. This includes training in awareness of learning disabilities.
Higher Education Institutions are responsible for ensuring the programmes they provide allow healthcare students to meet the outcomes set out by the NMC upon graduation.
Health Education England (HEE) has been working with NHS England and other national partners to set out a far-reaching plan to transform services for people with a learning disability, to make significant and lasting improvements to their care and lives. At present, this is particularly focused on supporting the transforming care programme and scaling and spreading the lessons learnt from engagement with fast-track sites.
The Department has commissioned Skills for Health, Skills for Care and HEE to develop a Learning Disabilities Core Skills Education and Training Framework which will be launched in May and is aimed at all health and social care workers who have not received training in learning disabilities, especially those nurses from other fields of nursing such as adult, children and mental health nurses.
