Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking with NHS England and the Department for Education to reduce speech and language therapy waiting lists.

Community health services, including speech and language therapy, are locally commissioned to enable systems to best meet the needs of their communities.

We recognise the impact that long waits to access speech and language therapy can have on the individual, as well as their families and carers, and we are working closely with NHS England and the Department of Education to improve timely access to community health services and on actions to reduce long waits.

We continue to improve access to Speech and Language Therapy by including the Early Language and Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pathfinder project within the Department for Education’s existing Change Programme, in partnership with NHS England.

The ELSEC programme provides training and support to education settings, through a new workforce model that employs pre-qualification speech and language Therapy Support Assistants, and focuses on early intervention, to increase their ability to support children’s speech, language, and communication development.