My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for bringing the important matter of staff training on learning disability and autism for the health and social care workforce before the Committee today. Evidence tells us that there is a pressing need to improve understanding and
awareness of learning disability and autism among health and social care staff and that the staff themselves want this training. Introducing mandatory training is an important way in which we can address persistent disparities in health and care outcomes for people with a learning ability and autistic people. As we set out in the Right to Be Heard publication of November 2019, the Government have committed to requiring all NHS and social care providers who carry out regulated activities to ensure that their staff have achieved the learning outcomes relevant to their role.
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We are committed to doing this through training known as the Oliver McGowan mandatory training, which was developed and trialled in 2021 with more than 8,000 people. The training will help to reduce knowledge gaps, ensuring that health and social care staff have the necessary training to support and meet the specific needs of people with a learning disability and/or autistic people. I would like to thank Paula and Tom McGowan for their tireless campaigning and input to make this happen in memory of their son Oliver. We can all agree that introducing mandatory training in learning disability and autism is the right thing to do. Everyone deserves high-quality, person-centred care that delivers the best possible outcomes.
However, as the noble Baroness anticipated I might say, there are practical challenges with the proposed amendment. The Oliver McGowan mandatory training trial evaluations are still under way, and we expect the final report to be published in March 2022. The evaluation report is critical to inform the wider rollout. It will provide detailed information on costs and on the best way to achieve desired outcomes. It will also inform on how best to operationalise the training. Therefore, this amendment pre-empts key findings from the evaluation and would come into effect too soon. It is for this reason that I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment today. I propose instead that we make a commitment to review all options to introduce mandatory learning disability and autism training once the final evaluation report is published in March. This would include returning to the issue of how this could be included in the secondary legislation referred to in the amendment. I hope the noble Baroness feels sufficiently reassured by that commitment and will withdraw the amendment.