Chamber and committees

Health boards and their local authority partners work together in a variety of ways to provide community equipment, including walking aids.

Guidance issued by the Scottish Government in 2008 on the provision of equipment and adaptations encourages this joint working through, for example, the development of integrated joint stores, pooled or aligned budgets.

To accompany the guidance we also published, in partnership with the Joint Improvement Team, a range of good practice guides and self-evaluation tools. A copy of the guidance and accompanying publications is available here:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Support-Social-Care/Independent-Living/Equipment-Adaptations

As we move towards the integration of health and social care these integrated arrangements will develop further. The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014 requires that functions related to the provision of community equipment must be delegated to the Integrated Joint Board. These arrangements must be in place by April 2016.

An advice note explaining these requirements was published by the Scottish Government on 30 April 2015 and is available here:

The Scottish Government issued Guidance on the Provision of Equipment and Adaptations in 2008. This guidance emphasises the importance of recycling community equipment. We have also published a report highlighting the benefits and savings to be made through effective recycling.

The Joint Improvement Team also continues to provide practical support and advice to partnerships on improving the procurement and delivery and recycling of community equipment.

The national primary care workforce planning survey is the method by which the Scottish Government currently obtains evidence from independent contractor practices about their staffing arrangements. While every effort is made to ensure practices participate, the status of GPs and practice staff as independent contractors should be recognised as a relevant factor in ensuring appropriate coverage of the survey.

A survey covering the year ending 31 January 2013 was published in September 2013. Prior to that time, the survey was periodic, and as no formal survey structure or cycle was in place, the Workforce Survey Advisory Group accepted a recommendation that such surveys be undertaken every two years. While no survey was carried out in 2014, preparations are currently being made in order for the 2015 survey to take place.

The Scottish Government and its stakeholders are discussing scope to improve these arrangements, taking into account the varied nature of contractual and employment arrangements within which GPs and their staff work; the practicalities of workforce planning in the context of initiatives such as sustainability and seven day services; the Greenaway report on the shape of medical training; and the Scottish Government’s national review of primary care out of hours services being led by Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie OBE, which will report later in 2015.

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering on the recommendations of the Commission on Women Offenders, and has made significant progress as set out in the annual progress reports provided to the Scottish Parliament.

Key developments include:

Funding to support local community justice partners in their plans to improve services for women offenders,

The creation of a national mentoring service for women offenders in custody and in the community; and the national roll out of fiscal work orders to provide procurators fiscal with increased alternatives to prosecution.

I have instructed the development of new plans for the custodial estate for women which are more closely aligned with the recommendations of the Commission on Women Offenders.

Our wider aspiration remains to reduce the use of custody as a disposal, with as many women as possible being supported in the community.

Under this government, the number of GPs employed in Scotland has risen by 6.9 per cent to nearly 5,000 – the highest ever on record. We have also increased funding by 10 per cent and there are more GPs per head of population in Scotland than in England. The Scottish Government works closely with boards to support and sustain Scottish general practice. For example, the recently agreed GP contract aims to give the profession stability over the next three years – reducing bureaucracy and allowing doctors to spend more time with patients. We will continue to work with the The Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Medical Association and others to find innovative solutions to GP recruitment and retention challenges.

With regard to the Primary Care Workforce Survey, there are difficulties in comparing vacancy findings in 2013 with the proposed vacancy questions for 2015. The 2013 questions around GP vacancies related to the number of sessions undertaken by GPs, not the number of GP posts. The proposed vacancy questions from the National Primary Care Workforce Survey 2015 Stakeholder Group read that they are around vacant posts, rather than vacant sessions.

Medical workforce supply and demand is presently governed by a formula based on estimates of GP retirals with a 1.6 participation uplift to take account of less than full time (LTFT) working by the future GP workforce, and a greater emphasis on medical care delivered in community settings. While, to date, the main factor considered has been the estimate of GP retirals and trends in career choices (e.g. LTFT, portfolio careers) these issues are clearly impacting on the sustainability of local services, so we are actively considering what additional evidence needs to be gathered that will influence future planning assumptions.

Phase 1 of the Access for All (AfA) Programme 2006 to March 2014: When the first phase of the UK Government’s AfA programme was launched in 2006, it was agreed that the Scottish Ministers would recommend the Scottish stations for inclusion in the UK programme with authorisation by the Secretary of State for Transport.

Between 2006 and the end of the first phase of the programme in March 2014, the Scottish Ministers recommended a total of 20 Scottish stations, all of which were agreed by the Secretary of State for Transport.

The Scottish stations recommended and agreed for phase 1 were:

The feasibility studies identified station infrastructure upgrades to improve accessibility at 19 of the listed stations and an operational upgrade to improve accessibility at Stirling.

Phase 2 of the Access for All (AfA) Programme April 2014 to March 2019:

With the launch in April 2014 of the second phase of the UK Government’s AfA programme, the Department for Transport (DfT) changed the station selection process. Scottish Ministers, the Welsh Assembly and each of the English regions were requested to submit a long list of stations requiring access improvements to the DfT. The DfT would then select which stations would be included in the second phase of the AfA programme according to the selection criteria without any further input from the regions, Welsh Assembly or Scottish Ministers.

Scottish Ministers submitted the following long list of 15 stations for consideration for inclusion in phase 2 of the AfA programme:

Aviemore

Blairhill

Burntisland

Cathcart

Coatdyke

Dumbarton East

Elgin

Greenock West

Hamilton Central

Kilmarnock

Kilwinning

Queens Park

Springburn

Stirling

Westerton

In April 2014 the Secretary of State for Transport announced that the following
three Scottish stations would be included in the £100 million programme:

Blairhill

Elgin

Hamilton Central

In December 2014 the Secretary of State for Transport announced an additional £60 million funding which included a further three Scottish stations to be added to the second phase of the AfA programme:

Kilmarnock

Kilwinning

Westerton

The Department for Transport (DfT) did not object to any of the 20 Scottish stations recommended and subsequently included them in the Access for All (AfA) programme between 2006 and 2014.

In the first phase of the programme to 31 March 2014, all 20 Scottish stations recommended by the Scottish Ministers were included in the programme. The feasibility studies carried out on these stations identified station infrastructure upgrades to improve accessibility at 19 of the stations, supported by £41 million of investment, and an operational upgrade to improve accessibility at Stirling.

As a consequence of a change to funding arrangements, the DfT changed the station selection process for the second phase of the programme to run from 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2019. When the second phase of the UK Government’s Access for All (AfA) programme was launched in April 2014, the Department for Transport (DfT) changed the station selection process. Each of the English regions, the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Ministers were requested to submit a long list of stations requiring access improvements to the DfT, who would then select which stations would be included in the second phase of the AfA programme according to the DfT’s selection criteria without any further input from the regions, Welsh Assembly or Scottish Ministers.

Scottish Ministers submitted a long list of 15 stations for consideration for inclusion in phase 2 of the AfA programme. In April 2014 the Secretary of State for Transport announced that three Scottish stations, selected from Scottish Ministers’ long list, would be included in the £100 million programme and in December 2014 the Secretary of State for Transport announced an additional £60 million funding which included a further three Scottish stations being selected from the long list. For details I also refer the member to the answer to question S4W-24884 on 23 March 2015.

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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

A breakdown of these figures is contained in the following table:

Total funding for 2014 includes £18 million (which increased to £19.2 million with additional unscheduled care money issued to health boards facing significant challenges. Also includes £1 million access support funding and the Winter Resilience Funding (some of which is still to be allocated).

The proportion of NHS expenditure on mental health since 2007 is shown in the following table.

In 2009-10 NHS Scotland’s expenditure on mental health was £727 million, and this rose by £169 million in 2013-14 to £896 million, an increase of 23.2%.

Mental health expenditure is recorded in the Costs Book (Report R340) within Hospital, Community and Resource Transfer data for the 14 geographic health boards and the special board the State Hospital only.

Total expenditure is recorded in the Costs Book (Report R300) and has been restricted to hospital, community and resource transfer data to give a more accurate comparison against mental health expenditure.

Total expenditure is also restricted here to the 14 geographic health boards, the State Hospital and the Golden Jubilee National Hospital for the same reason.