Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S3W-29611

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive what its position is regarding the reduction in mental health services in some local authorities.

Local authorities and NHS boards have responsibility to work in partnership and allocate resources on the basis of local needs and priorities, within the context of the Scottish Government''s key strategic objectives and commitments.

The concordat and single outcome agreements (SOAs) are designed to greatly enhance local decision-making and funding in all service areas “ including mental health - based on the profiling of those needs and priorities within each local authority, and informed by local knowledge and experience.

While we do not formally monitor the effects of the introduction of SOAs on specific services, work being undertaken on social care mental health benchmarking will give a clearer benchmark and more comparative information about activity, investment and, in time, outcomes.

All local authorities have submitted their 2008-09 SOA annual report to the Scottish Government, and to their local communities. The Scottish Government intends to publish an overview commentary shortly, which will pick up key messages emerging from the reports. We also offer support and advice to enable local authorities and other partners to consider the strategic priorities across the range of community care areas to inform use of resources and service redesign, in order to improve outcomes for people who use services, and their carers

We have also commissioned research on how the third sector is responding to the new opportunities and challenges arising from their new relationship with the public sector. This research was commissioned with the engagement of the third sector and public sector partners and will focus on a number of third sector organisations, the names of which should be published early next year.

Question reference: S3W-29612

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to meet the HEAT target to “reduce the annual rate of increase of defined daily dose per capita of antidepressants to zero by 2009-10 and put in place the required support framework to achieve a 10% reduction in future years”.

In order to meet this HEAT target, the Scottish Government has established the Mental Health Collaborative (MHC), whose primary role is to support NHS boards, and their key partners in delivering improvements in evidence-based prescribing of antidepressants and improved access to non-drug treatments (including psychological therapies).

This is done by providing dedicated time to NHS boards to focus on improvement work; providing training in tools and techniques that have a track record of improving services; supporting Boards to then apply those techniques to this area of work, and enabling effective sharing of knowledge across Scotland about what is and what isn''t working to deliver improvements.

In addition, we have also established Integrated Care Pathways (ICPs) for mental health in line with National standards and supported and accredited by NHS Quality Improvement to monitor and report on NHS board''s progress. A key milestone for development and implementation of foundation level accreditation was set for September 2009 and all NHS boards met this level.

For non-drug treatments, we have increased capacity for improved access to evidence based psychological therapies; by ensuring that resources are used effectively by delivering only evidence-based care.

The Mental Health Collaborative is already supporting boards to improve access times for psychological therapies. It will continue to provide support to ensure evidence based prescribing of antidepressants

The Scottish Government has been working with NES to produce The Matrix - a Guide to delivering evidence-based Psychological Therapies in Scotland - which gives advice to health boards on the issues involved in the delivery of evidence-based psychological interventions, including strategic service planning, training standards, and adequate levels of supervision.

Question reference: S3W-29655

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers that call-off contracts should be used in the procurement of social care services.

Call-off contracts are contracts awarded under the terms and conditions set out in a framework agreement with a service provider or number of service providers. The establishment of a framework agreement allows a public body to make individual purchases without repeating many of the stages of a competitive tendering process.

The Scottish Government recognises that the use of framework agreements can be appropriate in the context of social care procurement. The forthcoming guidance on social care procurement will provide information on the establishment of framework agreements and the award of call-off contracts under a framework agreement.

Question reference: S3W-28960

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 16 November 2009
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will ensure that all 54 Netcare staff at the Scottish Regional Treatment Centre at Stracathro Hospital are redeployed by NHS Tayside following the recent announcement about its return to the NHS.

This is a matter for Tayside Health Board and I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-28959, on 1 December 2009, which demonstrates the steps being taken by Tayside to secure positive outcomes for the staff affected by the decision by Netcare not to renew this contract.

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/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

Question reference: S3W-29617

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive what progress has been made in achieving the HEAT target to “reduce the number of readmissions (within one year) for those that have had a hospital admission of over 7 days by 10% (by the end of December 2009)”.

Question reference: S3W-29650

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how the Scottish Ambulance Service performed against national response time targets in (a) 2007-08 and (b) 2008-09.

Question reference: S3W-29656

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it has produced guidance on the use of call-off contracts in the procurement of social care services.

The Scottish Government published guidance on social care procurement in August 2008 which provided advice on the requirement to advertise framework agreements for social care services, where necessary to comply with the EC Treaty''s transparency principles. The guidance confirmed that call-off contracts awarded under a framework agreement do not need to be re-advertised if the framework agreement has itself been the subject of adequate publicity.

The guidance is available on the Scottish Government''s website:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/116601/0065310.pdf.

The forthcoming guidance on social care procurement will provide information on the establishment of framework agreements and the award of call-off contracts under a framework agreement.

Question reference: S3W-29649

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive what the national response times are for calls to the Scottish Ambulance Service.

The Scottish Ambulance Service national response time target for category A calls (life threatening) across mainland Scotland is that, by March 2009, 75% of all incidents should be reached within eight minutes. This measure is also part of the NHS Scotland HEAT Performance Management system.

The Scottish Ambulance Service national response time target for category B calls (serious but not life threatening) across mainland Scotland is that, by March 2009, 95% of all incidents should be reached within 14, 19 or 21 minutes depending on population density.

These targets are ones that the Scottish Ambulance Service were working towards during 2007-08 and 2008-09.

The performance information requested is set out in the following table. Information broken down by parliamentary constituency is not held centrally.

NHS Board	March 2008 (%)		March 2009 (%)
NHS Board	Cat A	Cat B	Cat A	Cat B
Argyll and Clyde	70.6	95.4	80.2	95.8
Ayrshire and Arran	65.5	95.4	75.7	97.2
Borders	53.7	90.3	65.6	94.3
Dumfries and Galloway	61.5	91.7	71.5	94.4
Fife	68.2	95.1	79.9	98.1
Forth Valley	65.0	93.9	77.8	97.4
Grampian	76.5	96.4	79.1	96.2
Greater Glasgow	69.6	89.1	77.8	91.1
Highland	66.3	92.4	70.0	92.4
Lanarkshire	65.1	96.3	76.7	97.0
Lothian	69.3	96.1	78.7	96.9
Tayside	69.3	95.4	77.9	96.9
Mainland Scotland	68.4	94.0	77.4	95.5

Notes:

*Information provided by the Scottish Ambulance Service.

**SAS systems record data under the previous structure of 15 geographic health boards.

Question reference: S3W-29613

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking to meet the HEAT target to “reduce the number of readmissions (within one year) for those that have had a hospital admission of over 7 days by 10% (by the end of December 2009)”.

A range of local actions are in train to support the readmissions target, which is designed to help drive improvements in community mental health services (notably in crisis and out-of-hours services), including patient pathways and effective discharge planning.

NHS boards are working with others, and are supported by The Mental Health Collaborative, to support and meet this target. Actions include: mapping current services; gathering and analysing local data on readmissions; staff training; involving service users and carers in service improvement; and improving data systems.

The NHS in Scotland is currently exceeding the readmissions target according to the latest available figures, with an overall decrease of 26%.

Question reference: S3W-29651

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 03 December 2009
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 15 December 2009

To ask the Scottish Executive how the Scottish Ambulance Services performed against response time targets in (a) 2007-08 and (b) 2008-09, broken down by (i) NHS board area and (ii) parliamentary constituency.