Chamber and committees

The palliative and end-of-life care strategic framework for action will be published in spring 2015.

The Scottish Government has asked the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care to develop plans to engage with stakeholders about the framework. The recently established person-centred stakeholder group, whose membership is drawn from service users, carers, the voluntary sector and staff across health and social care, will provide input in 2015.

We are also engaging widely including with the newly established palliative and end of life care national advisory group and its wider health and care networks, NHS board executive leads for palliative and end of life care, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, universities, NHS Education Scotland, independent adult hospices and the Children’s Hospice Association Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to completing the dualling of the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen by 2030 through a phased programme of schemes from 2017 onwards.

The preferred option for the 30km A96 Dualling Inverness to Nairn (including Nairn Bypass) scheme was announced on 3 October 2014. The Scottish Government will appoint a design consultant early next year to take forward the design, assessment and promotion of the preferred option for the scheme with a view to publishing draft Orders and environmental statement in 2016 for formal public comment and feedback. Progress thereafter will depend on the nature and level of objections received to the published draft Orders.

It is the responsibility of NHS boards to ensure there is adequate provision for severely intellectually disabled young people and to keep arrangements under review. In the national mental health strategy we include a commitment to work with clinicians in Scotland to identify good models of learning disability child and adolescent mental health service from across Scotland and the UK which could be used as tests in Scotland. That work, being undertaken by the University of Glasgow, is well underway, and will inform service development.

Where appropriate, children and adolescents who are severely and intellectually disabled, or moderately intellectually disabled, or with a severe autistic spectrum disorder may be treated in a child or adolescent mental health inpatient unit. The units provide treatment for a range of issues. The units will treat children and young people with a wide range of needs who require inpatient care, and the beds and staffing will be used flexibly to meet those needs.

The following table shows the three regional adolescent in-patient units operating across Scotland based in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee, and the number of beds available in each unit.

Severe psychiatric conditions are rare in children under 12, but those who require intensive support and treatment can be cared for in the 9 bedded specialist unit within the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Yorkhill, Glasgow.

Young people in secures facilities in Scotland can access their local child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). There are no secure inpatient child and adolescent mental health beds in Scotland.

Where very specialist inpatient care is required which cannot be provided by the CAMHS inpatient units, NHS Boards will use the National Services Division nationally-funded service for secure mental health services for adolescents or make individual arrangements with other providers in NHS England or the specialist private sector providers.

Children and young people referred to child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) will be generally treated in the community.

A new model of 'hospital at home' type care and treatment has been introduced across many NHS boards. This new approach creates new capacity. In the areas where the new approaches are most advanced this has been demonstrated to have had the effect of significantly reducing the need for unscheduled and temporary admissions of under 18s to adult psychiatric hospital beds.

The new approach emphasises the child's strengths and uses the expertise within the family and the local community to maximise the support available - the theory being that a small change in a child's familiar environment will be more significant in their recovery than a larger change in a setting alien to them. When provided in conjunction with practices such as proactive discharge (planning discharges from the date of decision to admit) and flexible approaches to in-reach and out-reach work, a number of benefits have been demonstrated. Some admissions are avoided altogether. Many are significantly shortened. Where evaluation and research has been undertaken, good patient outcomes have been demonstrated.

There may however be times when it is necessary to admit them to hospital for specialist treatment. Should this be the case they would be admitted to one of the three regional CAMHS inpatient units.

The three regional units are located in:

Edinburgh, which has 12 beds and covers the South East of Scotland health boards (NHS Lothian, NHS Fife and NHS Borders);

Glasgow, which has 24 beds and covers the West of Scotland (NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Forth Valley, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and NHS Ayrshire and Arran);

Dundee, which has six beds, with a further six beds becoming available in early 2015, and covers the North of Scotland (NHS Tayside, NHS Highland, NHS Grampian, NHS Shetland, NHS Orkney and NHS Western Isles).

The additional six beds in Dundee will increase the bed base from 42 to 48 and improve the quality of the estate and help ease pressure on regional services.

Our records do not indicate a particular problem at this junction, however we will continue to monitor the whole of the A96 to see where improvements are required and react accordingly.

Years of under-investment in north east transport infrastructure are being addressed through the dualling of the A96 and the Inveramsay Bridge improvement scheme as well as the dualled upgrade of the A90 between Balmedie and Tipperty.

In addition, we have the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route and we are designing the Haudagain improvement scheme, which will address one of the north east’s most notorious bottlenecks. Only last week we started the ground investigations on site to inform this design.

The following table details the yearly cost of the government car service since 1999.

1. Total costs include staff salaries, employer’s contributions, fuel, vehicle maintenance, private hire and travel and subsistence.

2. Partial costs; no complete data available.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on action taken by councils or other landlords regarding people contravening tenancy conditions by breeding dogs in social rented properties.

From the information available from the Scottish Government court proceedings database, one person was prosecuted in each of the periods 1998-99, 2002-03, 2006-07 and 2010-11 where the main charge was under the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973.

It should be noted that court proceedings statistics are based on the year in which the person's case is disposed of. People are counted once for each occasion on which they are proceeded against. If a person is proceeded against more than once on the same day, each proceeding will be counted separately. Where a person is proceeded against for more than one crime or offence in a single proceeding, only the main charge is counted.

This government does not believe in micromanaging how local authorities spend their money as it is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate their own financial resources on the basis of local needs and priorities. The majority of Scottish Government funding to local authorities, including the support of cultural services, is provided by means of a block grant. In 2014-15 the local government finance settlement amounts to over £10.6 billion and in 2015-16 this is increasing to almost £10.8 billion.

Creative Scotland are the public body that supports Scotland’s arts, screen and creative industries so you may wish to write to the Chief Executive of Creative Scotland, Janet Archer, to request what funding it has provided for public art projects. For that purpose the address is:

Janet Archer

Chief Executive

Creative Scotland
Waverley Gate

2-4 Waterloo Place

Edinburgh EH1 3EG