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Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, we are very sympathetic to the points that the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins, Lady Whitaker and Lady Thornton, have just made. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, is quite right about the importance of communication skills—or even ““communization skills””; my dyslexic son latched on to that one. We are acutely aware that addressing these kinds of areas is critical to the reduction of inequalities. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins and Lady Whitaker, were concerned to ensure that we had flagged up this area. My noble friend Lord Howe sent a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who has worked tirelessly in this area. I emphasise that the Healthy Child programme, from pregnancy to five years, is the overarching NHS framework for providing prevention and early intervention for children and their families, and consists of a programme of screening, immunisation and health and development reviews. It is led and delivered by health visitors. It provides regular opportunities after birth for the parents and the health visitor to review together a child’s development, health and well-being, including any concerns about speech and language skills. We are working to improve the coverage of the HCP by delivering the Government’s commitment to increasing the health visitor workforce by 4,200, full-time equivalent, by 2015. As part of the HCP’s schedule, the review at two to two and a half years includes a focus on speech and language development and is a key opportunity for health visitors to identify any problem and to take appropriate steps to refer a child to speech and language therapy if required. Following the commitment in the July 2011 publication Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, the Department of Health and the Department for Education are working together to develop the two-to-two-and-a-half-year review to become an integrated review, covering both health and education. The Department of Health is also leading a piece of work to develop a population measure—