Autism; Testing The Causes of Autistic Illness/Behaviour

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Thank you for your email.

Where a reply is appropriate we aim to send one within 20 working days.

If your enquiry is about a medical matter, please contact NHS Direct on
0845 4647 or visit [1]NHS Choices, or contact your GP surgery.

For the latest on swine flu, please visit [2]the National Pandemic Flu
Service (NPFS) or call 0800 1 513 100.

For general health information you may also find it helpful to refer to
[3]Directgov, the UK Government's Official information website, or the
Department of Health website's [4]Frequently Asked Questions.

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
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Dear Ms R

OUTCOME OF A REQUEST UNDER FREEDOM OF INFORMATION [FOI] ACT 2000 FOR
INTERNAL REVIEW: CASE REF: 469734R

Thank you for your email of 7 January in which you requested an internal
review following the Department of Health’s response to your FOI request.

The request for information and its background

1) You wrote to the Department on 29 December 2009, asking:

“due to 'autism' being caused by over 500 known chromosomal/genetic
abnormalities (please refer to UNIQUE the charity that deals with
rare chromosomal disorders) and by problems with white matter
and/corpus callosum (brain) such as Kim Peak has (the original 'Rain
man' suffered from) - how many children who's parents were accused
of 'causing' autism were tested using 1.Fish/mFish/all known
genetic/other tests to identify neurological problems of a psychical
nature to identify chromosomal/genetic abnormalities/brain
damage and/fMri to establish whether or not the illness was
physical / genetic or psychological - how many chidden received
these tests from January 1997 to December 24th 2009?”

2) On 7 January, the Department of Health sent you this response:

“Thank you for your email of 29 December to the Department of Health
requesting, under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, details
about numbers of children tested for autism between 1997 and 2009.
Your request has been passed to me for reply.

The Department holds no information relevant to your request.

However, this information may be held by the NHS Information Centre
(IC), so you may wish to redirect your enquiry to the IC, using the
following email address: [email address].uk”.

3) You replied on the same day (our ref: DE471104):

“The DOH ought to have this information in order to work to protect
childrens' health in general as the body it is, the DOH it is not
in order with the Childrens' Act (that takes primacy over FOI) not
to have this information, I therefore request and internal review
as to why your department does not hold this
information/statistics”.

Internal review

4) We reviewed the contribution provided by policy officials, and confirm
that we were correct in stating that this Department does not hold the
information you requested.

5) We have also considered whether the Department had complied with its
obligations, particularly those under the sections 1(1) and 16(1) of the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

6) Section 1(1) of the FOIA states:

“(1) Any person making a request for information to a public
authority is entitled—

(a) to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it
holds information of the description specified in the request, and

(b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to
him”.

7) I should explain in this context that the FOIA does not oblige public
authorities to obtain information which they do not already hold, in order
to comply with a FOI request.

8) Section 16(1) of the FOIA states:

“It shall be the duty of a public authority to provide advice and
assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority
to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for
information to it”.

9) Before responding to your request, an official at the Department of
Health had contacted the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care
(IC). The IC is a public authority under the FOI Act, and is also the
source of data for official statistics for the Department of Health, Care
Quality Commission (CQC) and other bodies. The IC website can be accessed
from: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/.

10) The IC replied that it would be best for you to contact them directly
for advice, using the email address supplied in our initial response to
you: [email address].

11) In your request for an internal review, you commented: “DOH ought to
have this information in order to work to protect childrens' health in
general”. The fact that the Department of Health does not collect or hold
specific information does not prevent it from obtaining information from
other sources (such as the IC) in order to develop its policy on health and
social care.

12) We also considered whether the issue of whether or not the Department
collects the information you requested falls within the internal review
procedure, and concluded that because it did not relate to our handling of
the request or the accuracy of our searches, that it does not.

13) I conclude that in confirming that we do not hold this information, and
offering you advice on where you might be able to obtain it, the reply we
sent to you on 7 January did indeed comply with our obligations.

The internal review is now complete.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for a decision.
Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the
complaints procedure provided by the Department. The ICO can be contacted
at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Lynn Swyny
Freedom of Information Case Manager

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