Speeches by Beales.

“From a school perspective, what I have heard is that they often do not feel able to carry those health risks—for example, putting back quite complex feeding tubes is not something that teaching assistants are necessarily trained or insured to do; these are health-based tasks that they are left to do. How much resourcin…”

“How much does the health system have to carry? What I am inferring from what you said is that you can decide where those tasks sit and support others to do those tasks. Is that what you are saying?”

“Thank you, that is really helpful. As part of the increasing numbers of EHCPs being granted, in your experience—perhaps this is for Ingrid and Dawn, from the locality and ICB perspective—what engagement is there with the ICB? What kind of map-across do they do to look at the EHCPs that have been granted, and the potent…”

“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. This place is much better for her presence, speaking up for people in her situation. It sounds like we had a similar background, but I was fortunate enough to be on a plan 1 system and, under a Labour Government, benefited not only from an educational maintenance allowance to…”

“When making staffing decisions, there are obviously competing pressures, even within paediatrics, let alone in the broader system. How much do educational impacts weigh on prioritisation? For instance, in my area, nursing input is really valuable, particularly to specialist schools. There are competing community nursin…”

“So from your experience, wider access to treatments of different sorts would not lessen that demand? From what I am hearing, you are just seeing an increasingly complex population. Is that your experience?”

“Just to follow up on the previous question, which links to this, Elliot, do you think EHCPs should be scrapped? Do you think they are not an effective tool for the resource decision making that you are discussing?”

“But just to challenge you, if over a year there are 1,000 more EHCPs and a promise of 10% of them getting speech and language therapy, presumably you could model how many speech and language therapists or OTs you would need based on the number of children being promised sessions and support. Would that not be effective…”

“That is really helpful, thank you. From a provider perspective, do you feel that that is happening in your locality on the demand side? When commissioners make decisions, are you seeing increasing resources for the extra specialists that are needed to input into EHCPs and deliver the care promised in them?”

“Okay; thank you. Dawn or Elliot, what is your experience?”

“What would be best, do you think? How could that work better?”

“Dawn, from your experience, does your locality have a similar way of working, in terms of looking at demand and need in the system and mapping that on to decisions at a commissioning level?”

“So you are not seeing people being unable to access assessments or treatment early, whether that be speech and language—”

“So more speech and language therapy has been commissioned on the back of that data.”

“What has that led to, in practice? That sounds like a really good practice—certainly not one that I or many others have experienced in other parts of the country. Given your increasing demand, what has that led to in terms of changing resourcing levels?”

“Are you seeing that follow through, in terms of lessening pressure to get an EHCP, if people are getting that early access sooner?”

“I, too, welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and join him in expressing our sympathies with and condolences to the families who have lost young people in recent days. Obviously, parents and students are very concerned at the moment, and there are reports online that private pharmacies are selling vaccinations for…”

“So is that how you selected the 30? Those are the characteristics you saw after selecting them, based on the data that you had seen.”

“Some of the characteristics that you were defining concern blame or fatalism in the system. Some of the actions that were identified in the meeting of those 30 trusts in February—that trust executives should walk the corridors and that there should be senior leadership in discharge meetings—seem quite basic actions, so…”

“The 4 March letter set out the 30 trusts that are being focused on. What are the common characteristics that those trusts share? Why is it those 30 trusts? Are there common factors among them?”