Autism Bill

I hope to receive guidance from my officials on that before I finish my speech, because I would like to be able to give the hon. Lady a satisfactory answer, given her gracious comments in her intervention. I certainly take her point on board, and I offer an acknowledgement to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, too, on that matter. Let me now say a little more about the issue of information, as it is crucial to the identification of need and the planning and commissioning of services. We will address issues relating to the collection of data on adults with autism by engaging with local communities, voluntary sector experts and carers to work out how to overcome existing problems in collecting information locally. We will develop proposals through the strategy to enable every locality to collect good data about the needs of people with autism living in the area. The joint strategic needs assessments are a key mechanism for commissioners to understand the needs of local people. The work we are taking forward this year, including publishing guidance and sharing good practice on strategic needs assessments, will help to improve the information local services can access to inform commissioning decisions. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) was present at the start of the debate. She was working on children with autism and the transition to adult services before she took up her new ministerial post at the Treasury. Supporting children and young people with autism is an important part of the work this Government are engaged in through the "Aiming High for Disabled Children" programme. Transition—supporting young people as they move into adulthood—is perhaps the area of greatest interest and concern. The report, "Aiming High for Disabled Children: Better support for families", recognised that transition provision for young people was inconsistent. That is why we established the £19 million transition support programme with the aim of addressing that inconsistency and ensuring that by 2011 every area is at least meeting minimum standards. Arrangements are in place to achieve that. The Council for Disabled Children sent all local areas a self-evaluation questionnaire in 2008. There was a 99 per cent. response rate, enabling the CDC to provide authoritative advice to Government on the support needs of local areas. The Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, working with the CDC and regional support agencies, agreed three offers of support to local areas: offer one related to recognising those working beyond minimum standards; offer two was in respect of those just meeting minimum standards; and offer three related to those not meeting minimum standards. There are stretching key performance indicators to ensure progress towards the 2011 target. The aim is to improve local services better to meet the needs of their disabled young people. Support to local areas is available from regional support agencies and centrally from the CDC, working as the national transition support team. The overall objective is to improve support and choices as young people plan and prepare for what they will do as adults. By improving local services, we can ensure that the right structures are in place to support young people. The guidance issued since "Aiming High" advocates a strategic transition protocol; multi-agency sign-up; and responsibility for delivery for senior managers across children, adult, health and social care services and for lead members. That approach includes Connexions; information, advice and guidance services; youth services; leisure services; housing; support employment; and local colleges. That is because of the need to reflect the broad base that transition covers. It is important not to focus on collecting data on the number of transition plans completed—that is a statutory requirement for all with a statement of SEN. Rather, it is better to focus on improvement in service delivery and clearer engagement with all disabled young people in order to allow them to contribute what they want to do as adults. Such an approach will maximise their economic situation, their health and their well-being. Direct grants are available for local areas that are performing well during the transition period. Regional adviser support will be focused on those with furthest to travel to reach adequate standards of transition support, and regional advisers will provide networking support for all local areas, with a particular focus on the local areas that are not receiving support in the two categories above. The all-party group on autism's latest report, published last week, fits well with the existing research on young people with autism and also with the larger body of research on disabled young people and transition. It highlights some key features of what should be available in good transition support, and I can confirm that those are all issues that the Department of Health's forthcoming research study on autism and transition will explore. In the research study we plan to draw on information from our current transition study "Models of multi-agency services for transition to adult services for disabled young people and those with complex health needs: impact and costs". That study is led by the multidisciplinary children and families team at the university of York and aims to support the delivery of the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services. A key question is what support those services provide for all young people with autism and not just those with learning disabilities, and what the young people's and their parents' experiences can tell us about what is working well and what is not. I expect that the Department of Health study will begin this year—on 1 November—and end in 2012, and there will be interim reports of findings during that time. Owing to procurement rules relating to confidentiality, I am sorry that I am unable to give further details now, but as soon as it is possible to do so, we will provide further information. The all-party group report also raises the issue of autism and higher education. The current Department of Health transition study that is looking at disabled young people of transition age considers young people with degenerative conditions. From the experience of that study, we are aware that a lack of support from any services for young people going on to higher education is a problem.