Lack of ownership within NHSE for struggling service is ‘complete failure of leadership’
No senior NHS England director is prepared to take responsibility for ADHD services — which are facing waits of up to a decade and severe medication shortages — HSJ has discovered.
Despite soaring demand for assessments and widespread drug shortages recently triggering a national patient safety alert, responsibility for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder services does not sit within any NHS England directorate.
HSJ understands that none of NHSE’s mental health, learning disability, or autism programmes have been given any resources for ADHD. It is also claimed that the medical and long-term conditions teams “are not very interested” in taking responsibility, and “assumed someone else was doing it”.
A senior source, very close to the issue, told HSJ that no NHS senior director had taken “ownership” of the issue, and there was a widespread misapprehension that responsibility for ADHD services was part of the autism remit given to the mental health directorate.
“We haven’t got the attention we need around ADHD,” said the source, “we need a [dedicated] neurodiversity programme.”
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Source: HSJ, 26 October 2023