Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government expects NHS boards to provide safe, effective care and services which support and respond to the needs of the individual. Our national mental health strategy and clinical guidelines for health professionals support mothers and infants experiencing mental health problems to ensure the NHS delivers safe and effective care. For women at high risk of perinatal mental illness, this includes developing a detailed plan for their late pregnancy and early postnatal psychiatric management. This plan is agreed with the mother-to-be and shared with maternity services, the community midwifery team, GP, health visitor, mental health services.

Scotland set a challenging target (now a standard) to ensure faster access to child and adolescent mental health services. These mental health waiting times standards have been included within the Local Delivery Plan (LDP) guidance for 2016-17.

The LDP and annual review process are key elements of the planning and performance framework for the NHS in Scotland, providing assurance that NHS boards are delivering mental health services to meet local needs.

The Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN) procurement strategy was developed and agreed by the Scottish Government in collaboration with the four SWAN Vanguard Partners: NHS Scotland, Education Scotland, Pathfinder North (a consortium that comprises the Highland Council, Argyle and Bute Council, Orkney Island Council, Moray Council and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar) and Pathfinder South (a consortium that comprises Dumfries and Galloway Council and The Borders Council). The Vanguard Partners, led by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), were responsible for the procurement, on behalf of all public sector bodies within Scotland.

The procurement was intended to deliver a framework agreement with a single contractor for a single solution with associated services accessible to all Scottish public sector bodies. The lifetime value of the framework was estimated to be between £110 million and £325 million; with the eventual value dependent upon the number of organisations calling off services from the framework over a seven year period.

Due to the potential value of the contract, the financial strength and stability of any bidder was a key requirement for the Vanguard Partners. A condition of passing the pre-qualification questionnaire was that potential bidders would require to have a turnover in excess of £25 million. Scottish procurement guidelines suggest that the minimum level of turnover which must be reached should be no more than two times the value of the contract. The £25 million limit placed therefore allowed for a greater range of organisations to bid.

A total of 10 companies completed and submitted the pre-qualification questionnaire. All 10 met the conditions required and were invited to participate in the next stage of the process.

As the strategy called for a single supplier, and the contract was awarded on that basis, it is now for the successful bidder to act as the services integrator and to use and manage as many sub-contractors as required to deliver SWAN services. The need for SWAN suppliers to have national coverage, and the nature of the telecoms market, tends to favour medium to large enterprises as they can provide more cost effective solutions with consistent pricing across Scotland.

Children ages 0-3 should receive the same access to specialist child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) as all other children and adolescents, and will be treated in accordance with the CAMHS referral to treatment standard, which states that no one will wait longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment for specialist CAMHS.

Applications to the Transforming Self Management in Scotland Fund, a £2 million annual fund administered by the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, are scrutinised by a grant allocation panel, which comprises members from the Scottish Government, NHS Health Scotland, the University of Glasgow, Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector, NHS Education for Scotland, Macmillan Cancer Support, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, the Digital Health Institute, Bobath Scotland, Breast Cancer Care, SKS Scotland, Deaf Blind Scotland, the National Autistic Society, Motor Neurone Disease Scotland, and the Scottish Recovery Network.

The waiting times standard for child and adolescent mental health services applies to children of all ages. NHS boards are responsible for ensuring that their services meet the needs of their local population. In some cases waits have been seen to reduce from as much as two years in 2009 to a national average of nine weeks for the quarter to 31 December 2015. This is despite a significant increase in the number of children and young people being referred, from 4,734 in June 2012 (earliest data available) to 8,416 for the quarter to 31 December 2015 and an increase in the number of children being seen from 2,640 in June 2012 to 4,469 for quarter to 31 December 2015.

NHS Education for Scotland has provided training in the Solihull approach across Scotland for practitioners both in the First 5 Years Foundation training as well as the Antenatal Foundation training. This training has been attended by both the specialist child and adolescent mental health service workforce, as well as the primary level workforce (in particular health visitors, midwives and nursery nurses), who play a key role in the early identification of mental health concerns and the promotion of healthy infant mental health.

NHS boards are responsible for ensuring that they have the correct skill mix to ensure they meet the needs of all children and adolescents.

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is providing a number of training programmes aimed at children, perinatal and infant mental health and we have worked with NES to produce the psychological therapies 'matrix' – a guide to planning and delivering evidence-based psychological therapies within NHS boards in Scotland. The matrix dedicates a section to children and young people and details evidence based therapies for paediatric psychology.

NES provide essential child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) training to all staff working in specialist CAMHS. The training covers antenatal, perinatal and post natal periods and up to 18 years old children. The recently revised training for health visitors and school nurses includes attachment, child development and parenting as well as maternal mental health. Furthermore NES also provide training in paediatric psychology which focuses on infants admitted to neonatal units, Psychology of Parenting Programme for families of three and four year olds with elevated levels of behavioural problems and The Solihull Approach which focuses on building relationships between parents and their infants and children.

Details of NHS boards’ revenue resource and capital allocations for 2016-17, and details of allocations to integration authorities, are provided in the answers to questions S4W-30092 and S4W-30141.

The Scottish Government expects NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to continually audit the performance of the Scottish National Chronic Pain Management Programme (SNCPMP) and provide NHS National Services Scotland’s National Services Division (NSD) with bi-annual reports. NSD are responsible for the planning, procurement and performance management of all nationally-designated specialist services in Scotland.

The first residential programme at the SNCPMP commenced on 2 November 2015 with nine patients. This has now been completed, and whilst not a formal evaluation, patient feedback shows that participants rated it highly (100% of the cohort would recommend and 81% noted it as helpful). A second cohort of patients was scheduled to commence the programme on 8 February 2016.

As part of its remit, the ministerial steering group (MSG) on chronic pain provides advice, direction and governance support to the National Chronic Pain Improvement Group (NCPIG) based on a report produced specifically for the MSG following each meeting of the national group. Additionally, the chair of the NCPIG is a member of the MSG. As the NCPIG includes representation from four third sector organisations, it is expected that their members would feed in to the strategic discussions taking place at the MSG via these two methods.