P-06-1240 Improve health services for people with epilepsy living in Wales, Correspondence – Petitioner to Committee, 07.10.22

Dear Jack

Thank you for your email on behalf of the Petitions Committee. Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to you.

We have reviewed the letters received from the Health Boards and the Minister for Health and Social Services, though we note that no response has been received from the Hywel Dda University Health Board. As this is an area for which we have significant concerns about the provision of epilepsy services it is especially disappointing that they have not provided a response.

We have used these responses, as well as information gleaned from other sources, to produce the attached report on the state of Epilepsy Services in Wales, which we will be presenting to officials in the Department for Health and Social Services. This report breaks down the epilepsy services and workforce in each health board area, as well as identifying the risks to epilepsy services in each area. We have also sought to identify instances of best practice in epilepsy services.

I appreciate that this document is too long to be fully considered by the committee members, so I have summarised the key findings in the second attached document.

In short, while we welcome the information provided by the health boards, we still have concerns about the regional discrepancies in epilepsy services, as well as the existing workforce issues. We do not believe that these will be resolved by the Neurological Conditions Quality Statement as outlined by the Minister.

It is clear that both the Department of Health and Social Services and the individual Health Boards need to do more to ensure that people with epilepsy in Wales are able to access appropriate services in a timely fashion, regardless of where they live.

The attached summary of the report includes our recommendations for how these issues can be addressed, and we would be grateful if the Committee could support us in raising these with the Health Minister and Health Boards.

We would welcome any further support the Committee can offer in addressing the issues raised with epilepsy services in Wales. We would also be more than happy to discuss these issues directly with the Committee.

Kind regards

Jan Paterson

Wales Manager Epilepsy Action Cymru