Chamber and committees

The amount of expenditure on GP services in cash terms since 2007-08 and the percentage share of operating costs has been:

The amount of expenditure on GP services in real terms since 2007-08 and the share of operating costs has been:

Prior to 2008-09, GP out of hours expenditure was recorded under primary medical services.

All figures are taken from the NHS Costs Book.

The UK National Screening Committee is due to review the recommendation on antenatal screening for group B streptococcus in 2016.

Improving food access is an important aspect of the Scottish Government’s work to tackle health inequalities and close the opportunity gap. The Scottish Government does so by supporting a broad range of policy initiatives. These are in addition to actions undertaken to help combat food poverty in Scotland.

Community Food and Health (Scotland) (CFHS) receives £599,000 funding from the Scottish Government for 2015-16 to support work within low-income communities to improve access to and take-up of a healthy diet. CFHS achieves this by working with individuals, groups and agencies at local, regional and national levels, providing networking, skills development and training, practice and policy development.

The Scottish Grocers Federation Healthy Living Programme aims to improve the supply and provision of healthier food choices in local convenience stores, particularly in low income areas. The Scottish Government and retailers have jointly invested around £500,000 in 2015 to promote healthier food options in convenience stores.

The Scottish Government’s Eat Better Feel Better campaign works with major retailers and community groups across the country to give people the support and advice they need to eat more healthily, especially mums of young families in more deprived areas. A new phase of the campaign is due to launch in January 2016.

Healthy Start is a means-tested, United Kingdom-wide government scheme that offers a nutritional safety net for pregnant women and children under four in low income families by providing them with weekly vouchers to put towards the cost of milk, formula milk, fruit and vegetables, and free vitamin supplements. Scotland’s contribution towards that scheme, for 2014-15, was £5.75 million.

S4W-28615 and S4W-28616 on 2 December 2015 provide information on the number of diabetes specialist nurses in Scotland since 2010. 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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The information requested is not held centrally.

A key aim of the Scottish Government’s Diabetes Improvement Plan, which was published in 2014, is to ensure that the healthcare practitioners, including diabetes specialist nurses, that care for those with diabetes can consistently access high quality structured education to enable them to confidently, safely and effectively deliver diabetes care.

We are working closely with relevant stakeholders to promote the awareness and use of currently available training packages among practitioners, which include diabetes specialist nurses, and to facilitate the development of additional resources depending on the practitioners’ requirements. A number of organisations provide practitioners with a range of specialist training options. These options are summarised in Celebrating Diabetes Education in Scotland, a document that was produced by NHS Education for Scotland and can be accessed here http://www.diabetesinscotland.org.uk/Publications/Celebrating%20Diabetes%20Education%20in%20Scotland.pdf.

Question S4W-28616 on 2 December 2015 provides information on the number of diabetes specialist nurses in Scotland since 2010. 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/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

(a) The Scottish Government funds NHS Health Scotland to develop and publish Ready, Steady, Baby! (RSB), a guide to pregnancy which is given to all pregnant women at their first booking appointment with a midwife. The current edition of RSB contains information on group B streptococcus (GBS). Following the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee closing a petition on GBS in May 2015, the Scottish Government committed to consult the petitioner on the redrafting of the GBS section of RSB. The revised section will be published at the end of January 2016. (b) Healthcare staff are expected to follow professional guidance from their respective royal colleges, such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) Green-top Guideline No.36 Group B Streptococcal Disease, Early-onset (EOGBS) which was published in July 2012.

RCOG conducted an audit, commissioned by the UK National Screening Committee, in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and supported by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) examining current practice in preventing early-onset neonatal GBS disease. The first of the two reports from the audit was published in March 2015 and looked at how national guidelines are currently being implemented and identifies areas for improvement in order to reduce the number of neonatal infections due to GBS. The second report, which will be published early in 2016, will focus on patient information on GBS, hospital protocols on preventing EOGBS, a survey of practice in midwifery-led units, and the influence of patient risk factors on practice.

The RCOG and RCM are also currently working to develop educational materials for health professionals, to include details on the appropriate testing methodology, sample site selection and culture methods for GBS carriage in pregnant women.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling and preventing homelessness, and assessments of homelessness have been falling in recent years.

Since the start of 2007-08, the number of cases assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness has fallen by 28%. Latest statistics, for April to June 2015, show the number of assessments was 14% lower in this period compared with one year ago.

This is due to a focus on the prevention of homelessness, promoted through the five regional local authority led Housing Options Hubs across Scotland.

Scotland has strong housing rights for those that are assessed as being homeless, including a right to settled accommodation for those assessed as being homeless through no fault of their own.

Housing supply is an important element in this, and the Scottish Government has already met and exceeded our current five year target to 31 March 2016 to deliver 30,000 affordable homes, and within that the constituent parts: 20,000 social homes including 5,000 council homes.

The Scottish Government does not have information on rents in private sector housing, broken down by local authority area.

The main source of the Scottish Government’s rent data for private sector housing is the Rent Service Scotland, Market Evidence Database. Information from this source is published annually on rent levels by 18 Broad Rental Market Areas and by five different property bedroom sizes, which are used to inform Local Housing Allowance rates in Scotland. This data source has not been designed to provide information on rent levels by 32 separate local authority areas.

In November 2014, the Scottish Government published comprehensive rent data from this source for the first time, covering annual data and rent changes from 2010. The latest Private Sector Rent Statistics, Scotland (2010-15) publication in November 2015 is available on the Scottish Government Housing and Regeneration Statistics webpages at:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Housing-Regeneration.

Comprehensive information from this data source is not available prior to 2010.

Surveillance of streptococcal group B infection in Scotland (including invasive disease) is based on laboratory confirmed reports received through the electronic reporting system, Electronic Communication of Surveillance in Scotland. Therefore Health Protection Scotland is already aware of laboratory confirmed cases and has been monitoring trends in Scotland for some years. The notifiable disease provisions in the Public Health etc. (Scotland) Act 2008 requires clinicians to notify diseases based on clinical diagnosis as an early warning before the case is confirmed, in case any public health action can be taken promptly to prevent further cases. The Scottish Health Protection Network will keep under review the list of notifiable diseases and organisms currently in the Public Health etc. (Scotland) Act 2008 on an on-going basis and if considered appropriate, based on any added benefits, may suggest adding group B streptococcal infection on the list as a notifiable disease.