Chamber and committees

On 28 September 2009, the Scottish Government and COSLA issued to local authorities joint guidance on National Standard Eligibility Criteria and Waiting Times for the Personal and Nursing Care of Older People. The guidance states that there will be, from 1 December, a national standard maximum waiting time, for people assessed as being at critical or substantial risk, of six weeks from confirmation of need to delivery of assessed personal and/or nursing care services. Arrangements for monitoring of the national standard will be implemented shortly.

The guidance also makes it clear that it is not appropriate for delays with assessment processes to be used to manage access to or demand for social care services. However, in partnership with COSLA, we will keep under review the information we are asking councils to provide from April 2010 on the actual timescales between first referral and confirmation of need and consider what appropriate standard or standards might be applied in future.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-30099 on 18 January 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

COSLA has issued guidance on charging for non-residential social care services. The aim of that guidance is to achieve consistency across local authorities. The guidance is not intended to produce uniformity but to provide discretion to councils to establish their own charging policies in order to align with local priorities and local needs.

COSLA have assured the Scottish Government that they will respond to public concern on charging for home care by ensuring that local authorities are better sighted on the charging regimes in place across Scotland. They are also exploring the possibility of a web-based resource for councils to ensure that individual charging policies could be effectively bench-marked.

The information has never been held centrally.

The Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, as amended by the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 (the 2002 Act), gives substantial and regular carers the right to request an assessment of their ability to care. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995, as amended by the 2002 Act, gives substantial and regular carers of a child with disabilities the right to request an assessment of their ability to care.

Our framework of outcomes for carers and service users, Talking Points, focuses on the outcomes that carers wish to achieve from the assessment process. Our National Minimum Information Standards reiterate this position.

We are working with partners so that they better understand the importance of the carer''s assessment, to increase uptake and to advance this as a means of ensuring better outcomes for unpaid carers in Scotland.

The Carers Strategy for Scotland, to be published in the first half of this year, will highlight good practice in the carrying out of carers and young carers'' assessments.

In November 2008, I announced that, with immediate effect, all new build hospital projects should provide 100% provision of single room accommodation, and that there should be a move to a minimum of 50% provision in future refurbishment projects. This policy was implemented with immediate effect to schemes in excess of board''s delegated limits that had not yet submitted outline business cases. For schemes within delegated limits it was to be applied to schemes that had not yet commenced procurement.

Information on all projects that may affect the number of single rooms available in 2010-11 is not held centrally. However, information is available on major* projects. The information below therefore covers a significant proportion of developments.

Known Projects Operational in 2010-11

NHS Board	Project	No. of Single Rooms	Percentage of Total	No of Single Rooms Greater than Current Provision
Ayrshire & Arran	Girvan Community Hospitals	14	53%	14
Forth Valley	New Acute Hospital - Larbert	282	64%	126
Forth Valley	Mental Health facility - Larbert	105	100%	45
Grampian	Chalmers Hospital	30	100%	17
Highland	Sutherland Older Peoples Services “ Bonar Bridge	22	100%	20
Lothian	Midlothian Community Hospital	80	91%	69

Note: *Major projects are those above NHS board delegated limits - £10 million for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian, £5 million for the other territorial NHS boards.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-30099 on 18 January 2010. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

In November 2008, I announced that, with immediate effect, all new build hospital projects should provide 100% provision of single room accommodation, and that there should be a move to a minimum of 50% provision in future refurbishment projects. This policy was implemented with immediate effect to schemes in excess of board''s delegated limits that had not yet submitted outline business cases. For schemes within delegated limits it was to be applied to schemes that had not yet commenced procurement.

Information on all projects that may affect the number of single rooms available in 2010-11 is not held centrally. However, information is available on major* projects. The information below therefore covers a significant proportion of developments.

Known Projects Operational in 2010-11

NHS Board	Project	No. of Single Rooms	Percentage of Total	No of Single Rooms Greater than Current Provision
Ayrshire and Arran	Girvan Community Hospitals	14	53%	14
Forth Valley	New Acute Hospital - Larbert	282	64%	126
Forth Valley	Mental Health facility - Larbert	105	100%	45
Grampian	Chalmers Hospital	30	100%	17
Highland	Sutherland Older Peoples Services “ Bonar Bridge	22	100%	20
Lothian	Midlothian Community Hospital	80	91%	69

Note: *Major projects are those above NHS board delegated limits - £10 million for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian, £5 million for the other territorial NHS boards.

The HAI Task Force considered a detailed paper prepared by Health Protection Scotland (HPS) at its meetings on 30 September 2009 and 8 December 2009, and a copy of the paper has been placed in Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 50022). The Task Force concluded there would be no defined public health benefit at this time in establishing a norovirus reference laboratory for Scotland and that the position should be kept under review.

The precise number of people attending NHS emergency services due to falls during the recent severe weather is not available from centrally collected, validated statistics.

Please refer to the answer to the question S3O-9094 on 14 January 2010 for high level management information provided by NHS boards and figures published by the Scottish Ambulance Service. Note; this does not include age-related information. The answer to the oral parliamentary question is available on the Parliaments website, the official report can be viewed at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialReports/meetingsParliament/or-10/sor0114-02.htm#Col22786.

Official statistics on accident and emergency attendances up to 31 December 2009 will be published by Information Services Division on 24 February 2010 http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/4024.html.

Implementing the provisions of the Disabled Persons'' Parking Places (Scotland) Act 2009 is for local authorities to take forward. In order to assist them in doing so, the Scottish Government has set up an Implementation Working Group consisting of representation from local authorities, ACPOS and disability stakeholders. As local authorities are required to report to the Scottish Government on a yearly basis, recording all activity carried out in relation to the provisions of the act, future progress will be clearly monitored. The first reports are expected towards the end of 2011.