Chamber and committees

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

“The personal officer role within the SPS is incorporated into the residential officer role and forms one of the tasks allocated to this role. The personal officer element of the residential officer role is to ensure a positive engagement with allocated prisoners and accurately maintain a record of these engagements.

No records are available of residential officers actively undertaking the personal officer element of the role at a point in time. The following figures reflect the total headcount and full time equivalent of individuals employed within the role of residential officer.”

*The figures provided for personal officers reflect the data held for a point in time of 31 March in each of the requested years.

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

“The SPS does not set a target for weekly hours of purposeful activity per prisoner.”

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

“Vocational instructors are defined as individuals employed by the SPS to deliver training to prisoners in occupationally relevant subjects, with the goal of up skilling prisoners making them more employable on release. In general terms the prisoner will work towards achieving an award between Scottish Vocational Qualification levels three to five with these awards varying between subject areas.

Across the estate prisoners can access the following vocational instructors (VT) activities:

VT Hairdressers;

VT Painters;

VT Bricklayers;

VT Plumbers; and

VT Joiners

Currently markers relating specifically to vocational instructors are not held on the central SPS HR database, therefore these employees are not identifiable and are subsumed into the larger qualified Instructor group.

We also considered the availability of compliment figures for the vocational instructor group however, this activity is not always undertaken by employees with a specific role of Vocational instructor.”

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

“The library opening times for each prison are outlined in the following table:”

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

“The Scottish Prison Service does not currently hold this information.”

The Scottish Government has asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. His response is as follows:

“The visiting times for each establishment are available on the SPS website. The links to each establishment are as follows:

HMP/YOI Cornton Vale

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Prisons/CorntonVale/HMP-YOI-Cornton-Vale.aspx

HMP Edinburgh

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Prisons/Edinburgh/HMP-Edinburgh.aspx

HMP Grampian

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Prisons/Grampian/HMP-YOI-Grampian.aspx

HMP Greenock

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Prisons/Greenock/HMP-Greenock.aspx

HMP Inverness

http://www.sps.gov.uk/Corporate/Prisons/Inverness/HMP-Inverness.aspx.”

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

“The following table breaks down female prisoners by local authority area and establishment as at 27 November 2015. There are no female prisoners currently located in HMP Inverness”:

Alcohol and drug partnerships (ADPs) have clear responsibilities for tackling drug use and promoting recovery. Scottish Government drug treatment and prevention funding to ADPs, routed through NHS boards, has remained consistent.

Specialist nurses work within multidisciplinary teams to provide valuable support and specialist advice to people and their families affected by particular conditions. In 2015 alone, the Scottish Government has invested over £2.4 million to improve access to specialist nursing and care, which includes funding to appoint additional specialist nurses.

The most recent information for epilepsy nurse specialists in NHS Ayrshire and Arran is published by Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland as at September 2014 and is shown in Table 1. The figures shown do not include those who spend part of their time working in epilepsy but have been recorded against another specialty.

Table 1 - the number of whole time equivalent clinical nurse specialists with the specialty of epilepsy.

Source: Scottish Workforce Information Standard System ISD Scotland.

This is a matter for the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA). The information is not held centrally, but can be found in the SCRA online statistics service:

http://www.scra.gov.uk/publications/archive/online_statistical_service.cfm