§ Mr. George OsborneTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the provision of specialist epilepsy nurses for children with epilepsy. [139149]
§ Dr. LadymanWe recognise the important role that epilepsy specialist nurses play in the treatment and management of children and adults with epilepsy. Around 100 epilepsy specialist nursing posts have already been developed in both hospital and community settings. Primary care trusts are best placed to determine the number of such posts required to support the development and delivery of local epilepsy services.
852WWe are currently developing the national service framework (NSF) for long term conditions, which will focus on improving the standard of neurology services across England for a range of conditions, including epilepsy. As part of the process of developing the NSF, work is in hand to consider relevant work force issues such as the need for increased numbers of staff but also for new ways of working, including skill mix, role extensions and multi-disciplinary working, based around patient needs. We expect that the group looking at these work force issues will make recommendations on the future supply of professionals and development of new ways of working to inform national work force planning processes. The needs of people with epilepsy will be considered in this work alongside other specialties and conditions.