We estimate there are 255 individuals with confirmed ARAP eligibility in Afghanistan (an estimated 1,950 including family members). All Principal applicants are over 18. We are unable to provide a demographic breakdown of family members.

Supporting the relocation of ARAP eligible persons out of Afghanistan and into the safety of third countries is a top priority. We are unable to provide details on onward travel or third country destinations for operational security reasons.

The hon. Member should note that the Afghan Citizen's Resettlement Scheme is a separate scheme to ARAP, which is administered by the Home Office and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and is a Home Office lead overall.

In October 2022, NHS England published a clinical commissioning policy for multi-grip upper limbs, which can be found at the following link: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/clinical-commissioning-policy-multi-grip-prosthetic-hand-all-ages/

This supports the provision of multi-grip upper limbs for both adults and children, where clinically appropriate. Microprocessor lower limbs are not routinely available for children and young people due to the length of the residual limb and their ability to tolerate the weight of a microprocessor-controlled knee.

As of 22 March 2023, there are currently 500 ARAP eligible individuals under the age of 18 accommodated by the British High Commission (BHC) in Islamabad. There are no ACRS-eligible individuals currently accommodated by the BHC in Islamabad.

It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population. We are supporting them to expand mental health services through the NHS Long Term Plan, which commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 so that an additional 345,000 children and young people are able to access National Health Service funded mental health support, including in the Barnsley Central constituency.

We aim to increase the mental health workforce by an additional 27,000 healthcare professionals by 2023/24 to support the expansion and transformation of services.

We also provided an additional £79 million for 2021/22 to allow around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services.

Assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may also happen through child and adolescent mental health services. Building on last year’s investment of £13 million (through the NHS Long Term Plan and COVID-19 Mental Health Recovery Plan), we will invest £2.5 million in 2022/23 to test and embed improved autism diagnostic pathways.

NHS England are developing a national framework to set out the process of how children, young people and adults should receive an autism diagnosis. The aim of this work is to improve the quality of these diagnostic processes and reduce waiting times.

ICBs and NHS trusts should have due regard to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE’s) guideline ‘Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: diagnosis and management’. The guideline aims to improve the diagnosis of ADHD and to improve the quality of care and support for people of all ages who are diagnosed with ADHD.

Updated figures for the under 15 years old age range will be published in 2022.

The new Tobacco Control Plan will outline plans to protect young people from the harms of smoking in support of our ambition to be smoke-free by 2030.

NHS England and NHS Improvement’s paediatric renal service specification sets out national standards for renal services, including the importance of mental health support for children. There are monthly clinical quality review meetings with hospitals on the quality standards, where providers of specialised services assess their service against the key requirements of the service specifications on an annual basis. Trusts and regional commissioners will discuss where standards are not fully met to support local action, including standards on mental health. The quality of specialised services is also assessed by regional teams.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement national paediatric renal service specification specifies that having a multi-disciplinary team is essential to running a paediatric nephrology service and would include social workers, psychologists, play specialists and youth workers. It is expected that each specialised paediatric renal unit would have access to appropriate psychosocial support. Providers of all specialised services are asked to assess their service against the key requirements of the service specifications on an annual basis.

NHS England and NHS Improvement published a national paediatric renal service specification in 2013 which sets out national standards for renal services including the importance of psychological support for children and is available at the following link:

www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/e03-paedi-medi-renal.pdf

In addition, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline ‘Renal replacement therapy and conservative management’, contains recommendations on how clinicians can support young people with dialysis and refer them to services, including clinical psychologists or psychiatrists where appropriate. The guideline is available at the following link:

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng107

The £79 million of additional funding announced on 5 March 2021 will be used to significantly expand children’s mental health services and will allow around 22,500 more children and young people to access community health services. This will enable community mental health services to provide more children and young people more timely care.

We are piloting a four-week waiting time in 12 areas to improve access to children and young people’s specialist mental health services.

The National Health Service is committed to providing help where it is required as quickly as possible. But it is important to do this safely and consistently across the country without introducing any unintended consequences.

The Department is closely monitoring the evolving economic, labour market and public health situation to identify the most effective ways to help people stay in or close to work while considering the longer term labour market strategy.

We are engaging with a range of external organisations, and devolved and local partners, to better understand the impact of the pandemic, for example on particular places, sectors and groups.

This will ensure that the Department identifies the best measures to support economic recovery and that we put in place the best possible employment support offer.

Jobcentres have already started to re-engage with new and existing claimants and are signposting them to appropriate support to support people through the economic recovery post Covid-19.

DWP is also engaging with a number of external stakeholders including the Youth Employment Group (set up by the Prince’s Trust, Youth Employment UK, the Institute for Employment Studies, the Youth Futures Foundation and Impetus) as well as continuing to work across Whitehall to develop appropriate support aimed at young people.

The Government recognises that music is an important subject and that all pupils should receive a high-quality music education. The subject is compulsory in the national curriculum up to age 14.

To support schools to deliver high quality music education for all their pupils, the Government has provided funding of over £300 million for music education hubs across England between 2016 and 2020. We have already announced funding of £85 million for music and arts education in 2020-21. This includes a further year of the music education hub programme, to help thousands more children learn to play musical instruments, and further funding for initiatives, including In Harmony, that support pupils from a range of backgrounds to learn about different styles of music.

The Government has confirmed that an arts premium will be provided to secondary schools to fund enriching activities for all pupils. Work is underway to develop the arts premium and we will be making further statements on this in due course.

The Department recently held a Call for Evidence on music education to inform our refresh of the National Plan for Music Education. We will be undertaking further work on this ahead of publication of the Plan in the autumn.

Funding beyond 2021 will be subject to the 2020 Spending Review.

We recognise that more research is necessary to understand the multiple factors leading to paediatric acute-onset childhood neuropsychiatric symptoms and how best to raise awareness among general practitioners on how to diagnose this condition and support affected children and their families.

General practitioners are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up-to-date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This includes taking account of new research and guidance. Training on paediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome is included in the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health curriculum.

Children with these conditions should be offered the evidence-based treatments for their physical and psychiatric symptoms in line with national guidance and with the involvement of multidisciplinary teams. Accessing education opportunities is a matter for the Department for Education.

In January 2019 the Department launched the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy which outlines four key areas for reform and investment. These include creating the right climate for leaders to establish supportive school cultures, transforming support for early career teachers, building a career structure that remains attractive to teachers as their careers develop, and making it easier for people to become teachers.

Designed collaboratively with the education sector, the strategy commits the Government to creating the strongest development and progression opportunities for teachers working in the schools and areas that need them most. The full strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-strategy.

As part of this, the Department is piloting two new financial incentives which encourage individuals to teach in disadvantaged areas. The Department is offering two uplifted mathematics early career payments of £7,500 rather than £5,000 to those who complete initial teacher training (ITT) and go on to teach in 39 high-need local authorities. It is also piloting teachers’ student loan reimbursement for languages and science teachers in 25 high need local authorities.

The Department is also investing more in challenging areas to create enhanced development and progression opportunities. For example, the Department is investing £20 million in scholarships to drive take up of the reformed leadership national professional qualifications in the most challenging areas.

The Department’s investment in Teach First (TF) also supports recruitment for schools in disadvantaged areas. The department funds TF to deliver an employment based route into teaching, with trainees completing a two year leadership development programme. It is a premium route into teaching, attracting high calibre trainees into the profession. In 2016/17, 93% of TF trainees had a 2:1 or above, compared with 73% across post graduate routes. These high quality trainees are placed in schools in disadvantaged areas that might otherwise struggle to attract this quality of applicant.

The Department recognises that some schools have greater issues with recruitment and retention than others. That is why it is delivering a £30 million investment in tailored support to get more great teachers into schools in disadvantaged areas that are facing challenges with teacher supply.

In April 2018, the Government published the Serious Violence Strategy which sets out a comprehensive set of 61 commitments and actions we are taking to tackle violent crime. This includes launching a £22m Early Intervention Youth Fund, which is already supporting 29 projects in England and Wales; a national knife crime media campaign: #knife free; a new National County Lines Coordination Centre and the Offensive Weapons Bill, which will strengthen legislation on firearms, knives and corrosive substances.
On 2 October 2018, the Home Secretary announced further important measures including a consultation on new legal duty to support a multi-agency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence, a new long term £200 million Youth Endowment Fund and an Independent Review of Drug Misuse.

Most recently, on 13 March, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced an additional £100 million of funding for serious violence in 2019/20. This funding will directly support the police’s immediate response to the rise in serious knife crime, as well as supporting investment in Violence Reduction Units, which will bring together a range of agencies including health, education, social services and others to develop a multi-agency approach to preventing serious violence altogether. It is important that we recognise that greater law enforcement on its own will not reduce serious violence and that we must continue to focus on prevention.

With specific reference to Barnsley and the Sheffield City Region, we have awarded almost £1.25m from the Early Intervention Youth Fund to the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire in support of two projects, one of which is working in Barnsley and the other in Sheffield. In addition, alongside all other police forces in England and Wales, South Yorkshire Police took part in a national week of action to tackle knife crime, called Operation Sceptre, from 11-18 March 2019.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) use the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to provide estimates for the number of people employed on zero hours’ contracts.

The ONS figures for people in employment on zero hours’ contracts broken down by age, do not go back to 2010 and are only currently available up to April-June 2018. Therefore no directly comparable figures to the youth unemployment statistics cited are available.

The majority of young people are not employed on zero hours’ contracts. In 2018 (Apr-Jun) there were 261,000 16-24 year olds on a zero hours’ contracts – representing only 6.9% of employed 16-24 year olds.

This is down from 299,000 young people (7.8% of employed young people) in 2017 (Apr-Jun), but a slight increase from the first comparable data available, which shows in 2014 (Apr-Jun) there were 235,000 young people on a zero hours’ contract (or 6.3% of employed young people).

Many people in full-time education are employed on zero hours’ contracts, in part because of the flexibility they provide. 18.5% of all people in 2018 (Apr-Jun) on zero hours’ contracts were in full-time education – compared to 2.3% of people not on a zero hours’ contract.

The ONS data shows that the majority of people on zero hours’ contracts are happy with the hours provided by their zero hours’ contract.

The following table shows the number of attendances at accident and emergency departments by patients aged under 18 with a recorded patient group of 'deliberate self harm', for 2016/17 and 2017/18, where the clinical commissioning group (CCG) of residence covers the Sheffield City Region combined authority area and Barnsley.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital

Notes:

- Attendances do not represent the number of patients, as a person may attend a National Health Service hospital on more than one occasion within the period.

- Data for the CCGs containing the patient’s normal home address has been provided. This does not necessarily reflect where the patient was treated as they may have travelled to another area for treatment.

- The following four CCGs make up the Sheffield City Region Combined Authority Area – data has been provided for each individual CCG as well as the combined total for the Sheffield City area:

- NHS Barnsley CCG;

- NHS Doncaster CCG;

- NHS Rotherham CCG; and

- NHS Sheffield CCG.

- Due to disclosure control rules, NHS Digital must round sub-national HES data to the nearest five, which explains why the sum of the individual CCG breakdown does not match with the total figure for the Sheffield City Region Combined Authority Area.

- HES figures are available from 2007-08 onwards. Changes to the figures over time should be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage and changes in NHS practice. For example, changes in activity may be due to changes in the provision of care.

The Government has a strong track record of reducing the harm caused by tobacco, based on a comprehensive approach to tobacco control, including bans on smoking in public places, and on promotion and advertising of tobacco products; high duty rates; the provision of smoking cessation services; and social marketing campaigns. The Government will maintain this comprehensive approach. The Government’s Tobacco Control Plan for England, published last year, commits to reducing smoking in 15 year olds from 8% in 2017 to 3% in 2022 and the Tobacco Control Delivery Plan, published in June 2018 sets out the various activities different agencies are taking to meet the aims of the plan.

The government’s sport strategy “Sporting Future” highlighted the importance of welfare and wellbeing for everyone participating in elite sport, regardless of age.

In March 2018 I published a mental health and elite sport action plan, based on discussions I held with sportspeople and key stakeholders from across the sport and mental health sectors. The plan sets out a range of actions to improve the support available to athletes, the sharing of best practice across the sport sector, and mental health education and training in sport.

As highlighted in the plan, UK Sport has worked with key agencies to develop a Mental Health Strategy, being implemented during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games cycle (2017-2021). The aim of the strategy is to deliver positive mental health for all people operating in the high performance system, for athletes as well as senior leaders, coaches, practitioners and administrators.