To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) the time frame for the production of the Reflections booklet for Social Workers on Domestic and Sexual Abuse; and (ii) the stakeholders that have been consulted in relation to this booklet.

As outlined in my Written Statement of 25 July 2024, Public Health Wales (PHW) was commissioned by WHSCT, in conjunction with the Public Health Agency (PHA), to provide a clinical opinion on the small number of cytology slides associated with the 12 cases identified with a category 3 audit outcome.

On receipt of the clinical opinions from PHW, information in relation to the 12 cases (with a category 3 audit outcome from the Trust’s invasive cervical cancer audit process and notified as SAIs) was triangulated and assessed by the WHSCT and the PHA. This assessment concluded that the number of category 3 outcomes notified by WHSCT, occurred as a result of the Trust applying a different threshold when categorising cervical cancer audits with an ‘unsatisfactory’ outcome. I have been advised that the WHSCT did not deviate from the 2019 ‘Framework for the Audit of Invasive Cervical Cancers and Disclosure of Findings,’ but instead applied a more rigorous interpretation to the guidance of when an audit outcome is considered to be ‘unsatisfactory’.

Additional guidance has now been issued by the PHA, using a more recent toolkit published in England, to promote a more standardised approach by all Trusts in NI.