On behalf of its membership, the cross-party LGA regularly submits to Government
consultations, briefs parliamentarians and responds to a wide range of parliamentary inquiries. Our recent
responses to government consultations and parliamentary briefings can be found here.
The LGA believes this is a progressive piece of legislation that would undoubtedly impact on smoking prevalence and ultimately reduce rates of smoking-related disease. We look forward to working with the Government and others to enforce this ban as well as ensure plans for a smokefree generation are a success.
School-based counselling and mental health support needs to be fully funded by the Government in all state-funded secondary schools and academies, to help support rising numbers of children and young people reporting mental health issues.
We need to ensure that children and young people can also access high-quality mental health support outside of school. Many children and young people face challenges accessing support for their mental health. Patchy implementation of policies has also fuelled a postcode lottery in provision meaning that children and young people do not get a consistent offer of support.
This settlement continues to leave local public health teams with limited resources to maintain essential services such as sexual health services and specialist community public health nursing
A rise in mental health problems in children and young people in recent years, exacerbated by COVID-19, has placed additional pressures on services and has hindered progress in reaching access targets. Targets set to improve the quality of care within inpatient settings, and to reduce their use in the long term, not been met.
Research commissioned by the LGA found that whilst there have been a raft of successive policies and strategies to improve mental health outcomes for children, there has been a missed opportunity to significantly ease pressure on the system by increasing the availability of preventative and early intervention support. Early intervention has been highlighted as a central aspect in many of these policies, however, this focus has not translated through to action with the system leaning towards prioritising specialist and complex treatments rather than early intervention and prevention.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the scope and effectiveness of section 75 arrangements. We have chosen not to answer all 30 specific questions included in the supporting document to the call for evidence. Instead, the high-level views of the LGA about the scope and effectiveness of section 75 financial flexibilities are summarised in paragraphs 5 – 19.
We strongly support a preventative, assets-based approach to health, which recognises that the essential components of good health go far beyond NHS treatment and care. An assets-based approach supports repeople to make healthy choices and enables them to live healthy, independent and productive lives. If they have health and social care needs, our approach is to provide community-based and person-centred care and support which enables them to live independently and live their lives as they choose.
Smoking is the single largest cause of preventable death and the biggest cause of cancer worldwide. As well as impacting upon health, smoking places a significant burden on the public purse, to the tune of £12.6 billion each year.