Chamber and committees

This information is not available centrally. Funding for mental health services, including forensic mental health services and the provision of NHS forensic units, will continue to be drawn from the overall funds allocated to NHS Scotland by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government sets the national direction of policy on mental health and provides funding to agencies, including NHS Boards and local authorities, to support implementation of policy. However, the management of local actions in implementing national policy, and decisions on local spending priorities, including how much is spent on the provision of NHS forensic units are the responsibility of relevant local agencies.

This information is not held centrally. This is due to there being no consistent definition of a ‘forensic unit’, with NHS Boards using intensive psychiatric care units (IPCUs), mixed purpose rehabilitative facilities or General Adult Psychiatry (GAP) facilities to accommodate forensic patients which are not routinely described as ‘forensic units’.

We do not hold information centrally on the occupancy rate for specific NHS Forensic Units. This is due to there being no consistent definition of a 'forensic unit', with NHS Boards using a variety of mental health services to manage patients who require to be treated primarily by forensic services. However information in relation to occupancy rates by ward type can be found at Table 3 of the Inpatient Census, 2017 - Part 1: Mental Health & Learning Disability Inpatient Bed Census - Part 2: Out of Scotland NHS Placements; http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00524621.pdf

Information in relation to the number of patients in forensic services by NHS Board can be found at Table 9 of the Inpatient Census, 2017 - Part 1: Mental Health & Learning Disability Inpatient Bed Census - Part 2: Out of Scotland NHS Placements;

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00524621.pdf

There is no consistent definition of a ‘forensic unit’ as some health boards use intensive psychiatric care units (IPCUs), mixed purpose rehabilitative facilities or General Adult Psychiatry(GAP) facilities to accommodate patients being managed primarily by forensic services. As such patients in low secure services are defined on a patient basis rather than by unit.

There is one high secure facility (The State Hospital, Carstairs), three health boards operating medium secure facilities which operate on a regional basis (Lothian-South & East, Glasgow - West and Tayside-North). There are nine health boards operating low secure units (Grampian, Highland, Tayside, Fife, Forth Valley, Ayrshire & Arran, Dumfries & Galloway, Lanarkshire, and Greater Glasgow and Clyde).

Local Authorities have the statutory responsibility for the delivery of homelessness services in their area. The vast majority of the funding which the Scottish Government provides to tackle rough sleeping is included, but not separately identifiable, within the annual local government finance settlement.

The Scottish Government is providing local government with a finance settlement in 2018-19 amounting to £10.7 billion. The vast majority of this funding is provided by means of a block grant It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including funding to tackle rough sleeping, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Additionally, in order to catalyse change as part of the work initiated by last year’s Programme for Government and the work of the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group, we have allocated an additional £220,000 to be spent on proven rough sleeping interventions in 2018-19. This is on top of £328,000 worth of investment (£262,000 from the Scottish Government and £66,000 from Action Group members) to take forward the immediate actions recommended by the Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter. We will be further considering the learning from last winter’s activities as we consider how to ensure initiatives are effective and sustainable in the long term, as part of ongoing work to implement the recommendations of the Action Group and of the Local Government and Communities Committee.

Details of each local government finance settlement since 2007 are available on the Scottish Government’s website via the following link https://beta.gov.scot/publications/local-government-finance-circulars-index/

The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group and the Local Government and Communities Committee have both made recommendations around improving the measurement of rough sleeping. We have accepted these in principle and are committed to considering how to take forward action in this space. As recommended by the Action Group, the Scottish Government is already working with the Centre for Homelessness Impact to develop options for a new rough sleeping data collection in Scotland, in collaboration with the wider sector.

The Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group, co-chaired by the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning and COSLA, is overseeing the development of a high level action plan on the implementation of the Action Group's recommendations, and further details will be available in the autumn.

Of the £328,000 additionally allocated to rough sleeping initiatives in winter 2017-18, £262,000 was provided by the Scottish Government and £66,000 was provided by other members of the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group. Allocations were made to local authority and third sector frontline services in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen in accordance with the recommendations of the Action Group to safeguard rough sleepers over the winter.

An independent review of the impact of the winter initiative has been commissioned by Simon Community Scotland, Edinburgh Streetwork and Aberdeen Cyrenians and is due to report later in July. The Scottish Government will review this along with other evaluation reports from organisations involved in delivering the immediate actions recommended by the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter, and will provide a summary report to inform key actions for next winter and beyond as part of our plans to eradicate rough sleeping and end homelessness.

An independent review of the impact of the winter initiative has been commissioned by Simon Community Scotland, Edinburgh Streetwork and Aberdeen Cyrenians and is due to report later in July. The Scottish Government will review this along with other reports from organisations involved in delivering the immediate actions recommended by the Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group to combat rough sleeping last winter, and will provide an additional summary report to inform key actions for next winter and beyond as part of our plans to eradicate rough sleeping and end homelessness.

Scottish Government officials have met with Vertex Pharmaceuticals twice this year to discuss Vertex’s proposals for their medicines designed to treat cystic fibrosis. Further to these meetings, officials have encouraged the company to discuss a possible application to the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

Decisions made by the SMC are taken independently of Ministers and the Parliament and are based on an assessment of clinical and cost-effectiveness across the Scottish population.