Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has continued to monitor Mental Health Officer (MHO) numbers over the past four years, by means of an annual MHO workforce survey, to assess the Scottish position and assist local services to address workforce planning. This annual survey has found that the numbers of social workers practising as MHOs had steadily increased over the period since 2005 that the new Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act has been in force, starting from 553 MHOs (495 whole-time equivalents) in 2005 and rising to 691 (625 whole-time equivalents) by 2007, with a small drop to 674 (622 whole-time equivalents) in 2008. The Audit Scotland Report was based on the 2008 MHO Workforce Survey figures.

However, the number of local authorities reporting a shortfall also fell in that latter period, from 23 out of the 32 local authorities in 2007, to 14 of the 32 in 2008. In addition, the survey found in 2008 that there were 105 social workers undertaking training.

Progress is being made by local authorities in redesigning services and, where necessary, increasing their MHO workforce and providing succession planning.

The Scottish Government provides resources to local authorities by means of the Grant Aided Expenditure allocation. In order to meet the additional costs of implementing the 2003 Act when it came into force, including the costs of MHOs, the Scottish Government provided additional resources of £13 million per annum to local authorities; that additional funding has continued to be made to local authorities.

In most cases, those requiring access to mental health services already receive treatment well within 18 weeks. However, for those areas where delays do occur, we are considering new waiting times targets.

We are currently working to establish by April 2010, a referral to treatment waiting time target for specialist child and adolescent mental health services and over the coming months will be giving similar consideration to establishing a waiting time target to access psychological therapies.

We are working closely with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and NHS boards to develop a range of initiatives to support the development around our commitment to expand and increase access to psychological therapies to meet patient''s needs better and sooner. This includes a tool for NHS boards to use in reviewing available evidence and in considering which psychological interventions might best be used to meet local need and demand. In collaboration with Skills for Health, NES has also produced psychological therapy competence frameworks to ensure that training equips staff to delivery therapy safely and effectively. We have also funded NES to support the training of a range of staff in a number of evidenced based therapeutic approaches.

We will also be giving consideration in the coming months to establishing a waiting time target to access psychological therapies.

Dementia is a priority for the Scottish Government and we have already put in place and planned a range of practical measures to improve early diagnosis, information, support and care management that is making a real difference not just to those with dementia, but also to their carers and families.

We recently announced our intention to develop a Dementia Strategy over the summer months to review our current work to identify any gaps and further opportunities for change and improvement.

We are implementing the recommendations from Looked after children and young people: We Can and Must Do Better. We recently wrote to NHS boards to remind them of their responsibility to these children and young people, not just whilst they are in care but also in their transition out of care. This responsibility is to ensure that the physical, mental and emotional health needs of all looked after children and young people for whom they have responsibility is assessed and that appropriate measures are put in place to ensure that any package of care that is put in place following this assessment, is delivered.

To support the child and young people''s mental health improvement agenda, we have recently made available £2 million new money each year to accelerate the development of specialist services. In addition, we recently announced £6.5 million over three years to increase the number of psychologists working in specialist services in the NHS. This is staff that will be able to offer direct services and to support others such as teachers and social workers in the work that they do with young people with mental health problems.

Vaccination policy in the Scotland is informed by recommendations by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the UK-wide independent advisory committee that provides advice to all UK health departments on vaccination. The JCVI have considered rotavirus vaccination and have concluded that while rotavirus vaccines would reduce the incidence of gastroenteritis in the population, at current vaccine prices they do not meet the current economic criteria for the introduction of a new vaccine. The JCVI keep all recommendations under review.

The latest available information on hospital admissions from a rotavirus infection is shown in the following table.

Number of hospital admissions with a diagnosis of rotavirus infection, by NHS board of residence; financial years 2003-04 to 2007-08:

NHS Board	2003-04	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
Ayrshire and Arran	23	23	28	22	32
Borders	-	3	-	-	2
Dumfries and Galloway	1	1	-	1	4
Fife	24	49	37	32	23
Forth Valley	17	33	25	10	16
Grampian	103	97	69	66	68
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	55	67	44	49	53
Highland	18	20	13	10	9
Lanarkshire	40	54	51	40	20
Lothian	3	5	8	6	14
Orkney Islands	-	1	-	-	-
Shetland	-	1	-	1	2
Tayside	5	7	2	9	5
Western Isles	2	-	-	1	-
Scotland	291	361	277	247	248

Source: Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland; Scottish Morbidity and Mortality Record 01(SMR01). Zero cases (-).

 

Regular briefings to professionals on a range of organisms, including rotavirus, are provided by Health Protection Scotland (HPS) via the HPS surveillance systems and through the HPS weekly report, which is available on the HPS website. At present no public facing activity to raise awareness of rotavirus is planned.

Under the GMS contract GPs are paid for maintaining a register of patients with a diagnosis of dementia. We recognised in 2007 that the number of people on the dementia register was less than we expected from survey data available. That is why we put in place a target for NHS boards to deliver agreed improvements in the early diagnosis and management of patients with dementia and specifically linked to the number of people on the dementia register. The Mental Health Collaborative is also continuing to support NHS boards in their delivery of this target.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-24333 on 11 June 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.