Chamber and committees

As defined in the national enhanced services guidance for GP practices, homelessness is described as a wide range of circumstances where people have no secure home and is defined in legislation for the purpose of determining entitlement to assistance and support from public service providers.

Groups defined as homeless for Healthcare provision include: rough sleepers, hostel/night shelter residents; residents in bed and breakfast premises, squatters; people staying temporararily with friends and family; all those with physical/mental health problems and all vulnerable people who have experienced domestic or racial abuse.

We are working closely with NHS boards to ensure that the number of specialist beds matches the need and demand of children and adolescents. We are also encouraging NHS boards to develop their community based intensive outreach services in order to enable children and young people to return to their own communities at an earlier stage of their recovery.

Since 2009 the Scottish Government have invested an additional £2 million annually to support these developments which shorten the time young people have to be in hospital and  free up capacity for others who require admission.

We are operating a regional model of service delivery and presently have 51 beds with plans in place to increase the size of the Dundee Unit (which serves the North of Scotland Boards) from six beds to 12 and this will take the total bed numbers in Scotland to 57.

We have been working closely with NHS boards to determine the number of beds that would best meet the needs and demand of the children and adolescent population in Scotland. We have also been working on encouraging the development of new models of service delivery which either shorten admissions or act as alternatives to admissions.

The 2005 report Building and Sustaining Specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, recommended 20 to 40 inpatient beds per 1 million population across each of the five jurisdictions (England, Scotland, Wales Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic).

The Scottish Executive inpatient working group recommended in its document Psychiatric Inpatient Services for Children and Young People in Scotland: A way Forward, that planning should commence now for a phased increase to 60 psychiatric inpatient places for young people in Scotland with ongoing review of need and demand.

We are operating a regional model of service delivery and presently have 51 beds with plans in place to increase the size of the Dundee unit (which serves the North of Scotland Boards) from six beds to 12 and this will take the total bed numbers for children and young people in Scotland to 57.

A report compiled by the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland which provides details of local authorities'' engagement with the Enhanced Tobacco Sales Enforcement Programme has now been published. Copies of the report will be made available through the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 52522).

No funding was provided to data sharing partnerships in 2009-10. No funding will be provided in 2011-12.

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) supports non-medical independent prescribing programmes for relevant NHS staff. The courses run to different timescales therefore the data available reflect this.

NHS NES has advised that, as at February 2010, 2,196 nurses and midwives had completed the training programme; as at November 2010, 390 pharmacists had completed the training programme; and, as at February 2011, 30 optometrists had completed the training programme.

Successful completion of the independent prescribing training programme enables the healthcare professional to register as a prescriber with the relevant professional body. Data on all active registrations is not held centrally.

The total number of non-medical prescribers who are prescribing in the field of drug and alcohol treatments as either supplementary or independent prescribers is not held centrally.

The reason for the delay was the extended absence and subsequent resignation of the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland (SCOTSS) National Co-ordinator who is responsible for compiling the report. The appointment of an interim co-ordinator has meant that this work can be completed to enable the report to be published by the end of February.

This information is not available centrally.

The Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland expect to publish the report by the end of February 2011.

The Scottish Breast Screening Service works closely with GP practices and local NHS boards in advance of screening in their area. All NHS boards undertake local awareness raising in the areas where mobile vans are timetabled to visit. This often includes meetings with staff at GP practices to encourage attendance. Information packs, including posters, are provided to NHS boards and GP practices and they are encouraged to display these to improve informed uptake locally. Posters are also displayed in local supermarkets and the service is made as accessible as possible by stationing mobile screening vans in convenient local locations particularly targeting deprived areas. Other activities that have been supported nationally to improve uptake have included distribution of a DVD targeted for women with learning difficulties. The DVD was designed for use by health professionals or carers with women.