Chamber and committees

The Care Inspectorate, on behalf of Scottish Ministers, operates a formal complaints procedure for anyone who is unhappy about a registered care service. This procedure explains people's right to receipt of high quality services and what steps they can take if they feel this is not being met. Details of how people can register a complaint is well publicised on the Care Inspectorate's website.http://www.careinspectorate.com/images/documents/82/Procedure%20for%20handling%20complaints%20-%20Jul%2014.pdf

Additionally National Care Standards stipulate that service providers must make available to service users and their families details of their complaint handling procedures. This information is provided to everyone receiving a registered care service and ensures they are fully familiar with their rights and expectations from the outset.

Together these easily accessible information ensures service users are made aware of what to do should they wish to complain about a care service, or challenge the findings of any such investigations.

All health professionals are expected to demonstrate through both work based learning and self-directed learning, the knowledge and skills in end of life care to satisfy the core competencies of their profession.

The requirements and content of training curricula is a matter for the Royal Colleges and is approved by the General Medical Council as regulator of the medical profession.

All Healthcare professionals including mental health practitioners are expected to assess and address their learning needs to deliver the high quality services required by their local population; this includes end of life/palliative considerations.

The NDIP 2016 Report shows a reduction in oral health inequalities in primary 1 children across a range of inequality measures.

The Scottish Government is committed to continuing to tackle oral health inequalities in children. This is why in the recently published Fairer Scotland Action Plan, we have included a commitment to extend supervised toothbrushing and fluoride varnish application for nursery and primary 1 and 2 children in even more comparatively deprived communities. Currently this preventive treatment is available under our flagship Childsmile programme to the 20 per cent most deprived communities within each NHS Board area. This will now be extended to those communities who fall within the most 20 per cent deprived measured on a Scotland-wide basis.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-03333 on 27 October 2016. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

As previously advised in that answer, the service is expected to be up and running by Spring 2017. I can confirm that the recruitment process for the specialist clinical posts, including relevant neurosurgeons, is currently underway, as is equipment procurement.

I can also confirm that, pending the start of the new service, we continue to ensure that everyone in Scotland who is considered clinically suitable for Deep Brain Stimulation has access to it.

Health Protection Scotland collects data on Hepatitis C tests from the West of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre, East of Scotland Specialist Virology Centre, Department of Medical Microbiology at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Ninewells Hospital and Medical School. These specialist laboratories receive positive samples from the 14 Hepatitis C testing laboratories in Scotland in order to carry out PCR testing for confirmation. Negative tests are generally not sent to these specialist laboratories. Therefore, for accuracy, the testing database only includes tests from Boards where there is complete data (negative and positive samples). This means that Hepatitis C test data is only available for prisons within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Grampian, Lothian and Tayside board areas. Between 2013-2015, 3,964 people were tested for hepatitis C antibody in the prison setting in these four board areas.

Through the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus networks, the Scottish Government has regular discussions with Health Protection Scotland, NHS boards and Hepatitis Scotland to help promote best practice and information sharing in relation to identifying people who remain undiagnosed.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the services, support and care available to people with hearing loss through its long term strategy ‘See Hear’. Awareness raising and training were identified as one of the recommendations in the strategy. The strategy was jointly endorsed by COSLA and is being implemented through local partnerships. Local leads have been identified to drive progress across priority areas.

The Equalities Action Plan (EAP) for Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland, published in December 2015, outlines the challenges to be addressed and the actions Skills Development Skills (SDS) will undertake with partners to improve the participation of under-represented groups within the MA programme. The plan can be found at: https://www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/media/40691/2869_sds_equalities_action_plan_digital_v7.pdf

SDS will publish the first annual report on the EAP progress shortly. The report will identify the activity that SDS has been undertaking to attract disabled people to MAs; to support them in applying for MA vacancies; and to support Training Providers in optimising success for young disabled MAs. Specifically in relation to young people with hearing impairments, SDS has:-

• delivered deaf awareness training to Training Providers in partnership with the Academy of British Sign Language (BSL);

• created a number of support resources, including the Equalities Toolkit, which identify how an employer / Training Provider can take positive action in recruiting young deaf people;

• raised awareness of the additional funding that is available to young people taking up an MA opportunity through Access to Work Funds and the MA Access Fund. These can be used, for example, to pay for a BSL interpreter for an apprentice.

Additionally, SDS has developed Regional Resource Guides which signpost where training providers, employers and partners can access support for young deaf people locally (deaf organisations such as NDCS, Action on Hearing Loss and Deaf Action are listed).

The Scottish Government does not currently collect data on people in supported accommodation, however Scottish Government are currently in the process of implementing a data collection which will provide some data on this. As rents in supported accommodation generally exceed local housing allowance rates we would expect a significant number of those in supported accommodation receiving support for housing costs to be affected.

Local Authority Strategic Housing Investment Plans (SHIPs) are produced every two years by local authorities. These are the key documents which identify the strategic housing projects to assist the achievement of the 50,000 target. SHIPs will be directly informed by the councils Local Housing Strategy and developed in consultation with key stakeholders.

Funding decisions are therefore based on the priorities of local authorities as identified in their Housing Need and Demand Assessments, Local Housing Strategies and Strategic Housing Investment Plans.