- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 4 December 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive on what basis deprivation will be measured for the introduction of the prevention-based school dental service.
Answer
The school basedpreventive dental service will be based on the Scottish Index of MultipleDeprivation (SIMD) which is the Scottish Government’s tool for identifying small areaconcentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 4 December 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive when the prevention-based school dental service will be introduced in the most deprived areas.
Answer
I launched ChildsmileSchool, the school-based preventive dental service, on 3 December 2007 in Fife and it will expand to the Bordersand Tayside with a view to rolling out across the rest of Scotland.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 3 December 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive when annual health and fitness checks will be introduced in schools.
Answer
Our plans are toincrease the range of nursing and other healthcare support available to schoolaged children and young people. A healthcare model targeted at deprived andother areas with high numbers of disadvantaged children will be developed in2008. Individual health plans for school pupils are being considered as part ofthis work.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 3 December 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive why it has decided not to ring-fence funding to support the development of mental health and wellbeing services, given that the SNP manifesto included a commitment to ring-fence such funding.
Answer
The substantialfunding included within the Scottish Government Budget to 2010-11 will ensurecontinuity of approach and investment on mental health and other priorities byNHS boards, local authorities and other partners.
Funding now to beincluded within the overall local government finance settlement has beenendorsed by both the Scottish Ministers and by the COSLA Presidential Teamfollowing detailed negotiation and which all believe will lead, over time, tosignificant benefits for users of all local government services.
It remains theresponsibility of each agency to work in partnership and to allocate funds fromthe total financial resources available to them on the basis of local needs,priorities and agreed targets including the Scottish Government’s key strategicobjectives and commitments.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Fergus Ewing on 29 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the total annual expenditure on drug treatment and rehabilitation is across all departments for each year of the current spending review and what the comparable figures were for each of the last three years.
Answer
The following tablesets out funding that was made available to health boards for drug treatment andrehabilitation services over that last six years.
(£000)
| 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| 16,900 | 16,900 | 19,700 | 23,700 | 23,700 | 23,700 |
There was also expenditureon drugs from the local government budget. The following table sets out how muchwas spent by local authorities on community care services for people with drug and/oralcohol problems. These are figures for gross expenditure.
(£000)
| 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| 30,298 | 34,572 | 34,577 | 37,299 | 42,348 | Not available |
The following tablesets out funding made available for drug treatment and rehabilitation of offenders,including Drug Treatment Testing Orders.
(£000)
| 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| 3,643 | 4,866 | 7,573 | 9,615 | 10,531 | 14,088 |
In addition to theabove, resources for tackling drug misuse are provided through a number of otherbudgets. In particular, many health boards use resources from their unified budgetto supplement funds provided through the drug misuse budget; the police use someof their resources towards tackling drug misuse, and further resources, such asthose from the budget allocated to dealing with blood borne viruses, are used todeal with the types of problems associated with drug misuse.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 29 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it still plans to double the number of school nurses over the period of the spending review.
Answer
Our plans are to increasethe range of nursing and other healthcare support available to school aged childrenand young people. A health care model targeted at deprived and other areas withhigh numbers of disadvantaged children will be developed in 2008, and School nurseswill have an important part to play in this.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 29 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what support it intends to give to school nurses in secondary schools to deliver the sexual health strategy.
Answer
We will use findingsof the current review of the sexual health strategy to determine how best to supportthe contribution of nurses working in schools in delivering the strategy.
There are many nursesacross Scotland already delivering sexual health and relationshipeducation in addition to supporting the delivery of drop-in services in schools.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 29 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many more NHS 24 local mini-centres it intends to establish.
Answer
The Scottish Governmentand NHS 24 are committed to providing a local presence in each mainland NHSboard area.
There are currentlyfive local NHS 24 centres which were developed in partnership with local NHSboards in Highland (which also covers the Islands Boards), Ayrshireand Arran, Lanarkshire, Tayside and Dumfries and Galloway and which have been in operation since November2005.
Discussions are progressingwith NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Fife, NHS Lothian and NHS Grampian abouta number of initiatives on the further development of locally integrated services.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 29 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the timescale is for the establishment of NHS 24 local mini-centres.
Answer
NHS 24 is workingin partnership with area NHS boards to look at opportunities to develop local centresin each mainland board area. Timescales are therefore varied, although it is expectedthat the centre for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde will become operational in thefirst half of 2008 and the centre in Fife will go online in December 2008.
The centre in NHSGrampian is part of a much larger development project which will take longer, butcloser integrated working is already taking place within the current contact centrebased in Aberdeen. The work with NHS Lothian is at a very earlystage with the first project board meeting to discuss options due to take placein December 2007.
- Asked by: Ross Finnie, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Liberal Democrats
-
Date lodged: Monday, 19 November 2007
-
Current Status:
Answered by Fergus Ewing on 28 November 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it plans to restore ring-fenced funding for drugs education as set out in the SNP manifesto.
Answer
Through the Concordatwith COSLA we want to move to an outcomes-focused approach which empowers localauthorities and provides consolidated block grants rather than ring-fenced funding.This will give councils flexibility to allocate resources to meet local need andpriorities. As part of drawing up Single Outcome Agreements we will develop outcomesto ensure that our common aim of reducing drug misuse can be met.
Effective substancemisuse education is important in helping young people to make informed choices aboutpositive lifestyles and avoiding drug use. The Scottish Government is actively workingwith key stakeholders to develop a programme of work to improve the effectiveness of substance misuse educationin schools.
