Chamber and committees

The number of people bereaved by suicide are not held centrally, nor is it clear how such would be determined as any death by suicide can have an impact on a wide range of people beyond immediate family.

Subsequent to publication of Reviewing Peer Working: A New Way of Working in Mental Health, the Scottish Government has provided funding to the Scottish Recovery Network to take forward work on developing peer-support networks in Scotland. Discussions with stakeholders to implement the findings of the report are on-going. A final update on progress will be given in early 2016 once the current mental health strategy has concluded.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-28349 on 17 November 2015 which provides information on useful current guidance which is available for use in supporting people who have been bereaved by suicide. NHS Health Scotland undertakes regular updates of all guidance and publications it produces, to ensure the information is up to date and still relevant. 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 Scottish Government has not had any discussions with East Renfrewshire Council regarding this as it is a matter for the local authority. It is the local authorities’ responsibility to set their own priorities in the delivery of local services. The Scottish Government, however, expects local authorities to consult with service users and carers when determining the resources to be allocated to centres for people with learning disabilities and other additional support needs.

The Ministerial Task Force on Health Inequalities was presented and accepted evidence that the fundamental causes of health inequalities are rooted in an unequal distribution of income, power and wealth, and that these causes influence the distribution of wider environmental influences on health such as the availability of good quality housing, work and education as well as access to services and social opportunities in an area. This wider environment shapes individual experiences resulting in unequal health outcomes.

Mental wellbeing is a complex phenomenon which can be influenced by a wide range of factors. It is difficult to attribute levels of wellbeing to particular circumstances or locations. However, it is already known that people living in the least deprived areas can be at risk of experiencing lower levels of mental wellbeing.

The Scottish Government is tackling mental wellbeing through the commitments set out in the mental health strategy and the suicide prevention strategy, as well as pursuing policies and practices to reduce the fundamental causes of health inequalities through wider action on improving housing, employability and infrastructure, for example our investment of £1.7 billion in affordable housing over the lifetime of this Parliament.

We commissioned the Mental Health Foundation and Voices of Experience to undertake the 10 year follow up report. We have been working with the Mental Health Foundation to address the delays in publishing and can now assure you this will be published by Christmas 2015. The delays are related to staffing resources and the complexity of the work.

The number of patients admitted to a hospital outwith their health board of residence broken down by health board of residence and year is shown in the following table. The figures below for out of area treatment includes patients treated at other hospitals such as the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, even if that hospital is within the local health board area:

Source: SMR01 Information Services Division Scotland.

As there is currently no standard set of definitions for crowding, data on crowding, is not available.

The Emergency Department Capacity Management Guidance, issued in partnership with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in September, will support NHS boards to develop local definitions, measures and thresholds appropriate to their different physical layouts and size of units.

Circumstances will arise where a practice experiences capacity issues and is unable to routinely accept new patients onto its list. We expect health boards to work with practices as constructively and as flexibly as is appropriate to help manage the situation.

The information is not available in the format requested.

NHS Education for Scotland is responsible for the training placements of GPs in Scotland but it does not hold information on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation. It has provided the following information that shows the number of hospital based GP training posts by deanery from 2011-15 (tables one to five), as well as a breakdown of the number of GP training practices by region for 2015 (table six). There can be up to three trainees in one practice at a time.

Table One:

Table Two:

Table Three:

Table Four:

Table Five:

Table Six:

Number of GP Training Practices by Region in 2015: