Children's Services (Hansard, 12 March 2003)

§ Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he plans to publish his NSF for children's services; what his priorities are for improving children's health services; and how much NHS money has been spent on children's health services in each of the last six years. [89928]

§ Jacqui Smith
The publication date of the full children's national service framework has not been finalised yet. The NSF will cover children's health and social care services. The first module, covering standards for children in hospital, will be published shortly.
The health service has a particular contribution to make in ensuring that all children have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. The NSF will set out our plans for improving services for children based on the 339W aims in the NHS Plan of developing services around the need of individuals and improving their experience of care.
The planning and priorities framework issued last year by the Department of Health set out a number of targets to improve services from the national health service for people of all ages. Specific areas for improvement for children included targets to reduce health inequalities, improve access to child and adolescent mental health services, tackle teenage pregnancy and improve the life chances of children in the care of local authorities.
The total cost of children's hospital services¹ in England for 2000–2001 is estimated to be £2.4 billion². Data for other health services for children is not available.
¹ "Children's hospital services" are defined here as hospital admissions, day cases, and out-patient appointments for 0 to 19-year-olds.
² This figure has been calculated by the Department of Health Economics and Operational Research Branch drawing on data from the following sources:
http://www.doh.gov.uk/hes/—Admissions of 0–19 year olds to NHS hospitals (data available by order). http://www.doh.gov.uk/nhsexec/refcosts2001.htm#spred—National Schedule of Reference Costs—mean costs of Healthcare Resource Groups.
http://www. doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/statistics/2000–01/ outpatient attendances/y00.htm—Out-patient attendances, England 2000–01.
"Living in Britain: Results from the General Household Survey", The Stationery Office 2001, p.103—Trends in percentages of persons who reported attending an out-patient or casualty department in a three month reference period: 1972 to 2000. http:// www.gad.gov.uk—The Government Actuary's Department Population Projections, England 2000.

§ Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) whether it is possible for a local authority to be rated excellent for its child and family social services division without the child and adolescent mental health services element being rated good or better; [100495]
(2)whether inspections by social service departments of child and family services include consideration of joint working with child and adolescent mental health services. [100496]

§ Jacqui Smith
The Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) assess the child and family social services in each council and categorise this performance by rating whether they are "serving people well" as "no", "some", "most" or "yes". There is no separate, explicit categorisation for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), but it is one of a number of service areas that feed into the overall children's services judgement. As a result, a council could receive the highest rated children's social services judgement ("serving people well", categorised as "yes"), without their CAMHS being considered good.
Inspections of child and family social services are carried out by SSI, with the results feeding into the overall assessment of performance. The most recent inspection standards, published in September 2002, state that there should be "effective joint working between agencies at the point of service delivery, which puts children's needs before the convenience of organisations".