- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Stewart Maxwell on 31 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many applications have been made under the central heating programme and what the average wait between application and installation has been since its inception, also broken down by parliamentary constituency.
Answer
I have asked Angiolina Foster, Chief Executive of Communities Scotland to respond. Her response is as follows:
Information in theformat requested is not held centrally.
The average waitingtime on the central heating programme reported by the managing agent since2002-03 is shown in the following table:
| Year | Average Waiting Time (Months) |
| 2002-03 | 8 |
| 2003-04 | 8 |
| 2004-05 | 5-6 |
| 2005-06 | 5-6 |
| 2006-07 | 5 |
| 2007-08 (current) | 5-6 |
In 2006-07, 25,133householders applied to the programme and in 2007-08, 15,197 have applied, to theend of September.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 31 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it is taking to end the practice of children and adolescents being admitted to adult psychiatric wards as a result of a lack of suitable in-patient facilities for children and adolescents.
Answer
We continue our workwith NHS boards and other partners to deliver the objectives from the Mental Healthof Children and Young People’s Framework (Bib. number 38415) and Delivering a HealthyFuture (Bib. number 42137) designed to achieve early and sustained change and improvementon all aspects of child and adolescent mental health care.
We are seeing progressin delivering the key timetabled milestones including attention on training andworkforce planning; increasing bed numbers; better early intervention; supportedtransitions; improved primary care, and improved planning and delivery of specialistcare for children and young people with mental health problems.
Work to reduce inappropriateadmissions to adult beds is showing real progress. There were 186 such admissionslast year, a significant reduction from the 290 recorded for 2002. This progressreflects our drive to increase the number of dedicated beds for this important caregroup from 44 beds to 56 by 2010 and our attention on improving provision to supportchildren and young people in the community, to prevent inappropriate admissionsand to facilitate earlier and safe discharge from hospital care.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 31 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many beds there have been for children and adolescents in child and adolescent psychiatric wards in each year since 1999.
Answer
Information by hospitalward is not collected centrally. However, figures for the specialties Child Psychiatryand Adolescent Psychiatry and are given in the following table.
Average AvailableStaffed Hospital Beds for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Specialties in Scotland
| | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 |
| Child Psychiatry | 30 | 23 | 15 | 16 | 11 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 9 |
| Adolescent Psychiatry | 39 | 40 | 48 | 43 | 38 | 32 | 35 | 35 | 35 |
Source:ISD(S)1.
Work to reduce inappropriateadmissions to adult beds is showing real progress. There were 186 such admissionslast year, a significant reduction from the 290 recorded for 2002. This progressreflects our drive to increase the number of dedicated beds for this important caregroup from 44 beds to 56 by 2010 and our attention on improving provision to supportchildren and young people in the community, to prevent inappropriate admissionsand to facilitate earlier and safe discharge from hospital care.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 31 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many babies have been born to drug-dependent mothers in each year since 1999, also broken down by maternity unit.
Answer
The information requestedis supplied for the years 1998-99 to 2004-05 (the latest year available) in Table1: Number of Babies Born in Maternities Recording Drug Misuse by Hospital, YearEnding 31 March, a copy of which is available in the Scottish ParliamentInformation Centre (Bib. number 43944).
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 30 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers that the building being constructed as a replacement for the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow contains the requisite features of a hospital.
Answer
NHS Glasgow and Clydehave, following extensive consultation, developed a strategy for the future deliveryof health care services for the area covered by that board. This service strategyinvolves the replacement of a number of existing facilities which are not consideredappropriate for the delivery of health care services in the 21st Century and theVictoria Hospital falls into that category.
Not only are modelsof care vastly different to those practised when the Victoria Hospital was built but the use of modern materialsand methods of construction result in buildings which frequently differ in appearanceto those being replaced. Indeed we should expect and welcome change to the physicalappearance of healthcare buildings as we place increasing emphasis on environmentswhich are supportive of the recovery process and of the staff who work in our hospitals.
The building currentlyunder construction to replace the Victoria Hospital will be very different in appearance but what is criticalis that it delivers the appropriate range of healthcare facilities in an appropriateenvironment. I am confident that the new building will deliver these clinical servicesfrom a building which has been designed to the highest standards.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 19 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 30 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide a comprehensive list of all its waiting time guarantees for the health service and the latest figures for the number of patients who have been treated (a) within and (b) outwith guaranteed waiting times.
Answer
The NHS in Scotland is working to ensure delivery of a number of nationalwaiting times targets for the benefit of patients. These national targets are publishedon the
Acute Hospital Care website, which is operated by NHS National ServicesScotland’s Information Services Division. The website can be accessed at:
www.isdscotland.org/waiting_times.The website is updatedregularly and statistics on performance against all the national waiting times targetsare shown on the website, with the exception of the target that every patient shouldhave access to a GP, nurse or other health care professional within 48 hours. Forthe years 2005-06 and 2006-07, NHS boards reported that some 99% of practices demonstratedcompliance with requirements for this target, compared with 97% in 2004-05.
We are supportingNHS boards as they work towards abolishing availability status codes and introducingnew arrangements for measuring waiting times, so that all patients waiting for afirst out-patient appointment with a consultant or for hospital inpatient or daycase treatment come within the scope of national targets from the beginning of nextyear.
Consideration is currentlybeing given to ways in which waiting times targets can be turned into legally bindingwaiting times guarantees and so make them more meaningful to patients. We will consultwidely on this in due course.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 10 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 29 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive how many fixed penalty notices have been issued (a) nationally and (b) in each local authority area since the Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003 came into force.
Answer
This informationis not held centrally but with the individual local authorities.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 22 October 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Kenny MacAskill on 29 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S3W-4664 by Kenny MacAskill on 17 October 2007, how many police officers there have been in each division of Strathclyde Police in each year since 1979, shown on a (a) head count and (b) whole-time equivalent basis over the entire period.
Answer
This informationis not held centrally.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 27 September 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Maureen Watt on 25 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what the average class size has been in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.
Answer
Information onaverage primary class size is collected and published each year in “Pupils in Scotland” and, prior to 2003, in the “Summary Results of theSchool Census”. These are available in the Scottish Parliament InformationCentre (Bib. numbers 20194, 20197, 22064 and 29040). Information publishedsince 2003 can be accessed on the Scottish Government website by using thefollowing hyperlink:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/PubPupilCensusInformation onclass sizes in secondary schools is not routinely collected as part of theSchool Census.
- Asked by: Jackson Carlaw, MSP for West of Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 27 September 2007
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 25 October 2007
To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it is taking to increase the availability of residential care for people suffering from acute dementia.
Answer
The Scottish Governmenthas identified the needs of people with dementia as a priority. We are discussingwith key stakeholders how we respond in a co-ordinated way to the needs of the growingnumbers of people with dementia.
It is the responsibilityof local agencies to plan and commission the appropriate mix of residential andhome-based care services to meet the current and future needs of people in theirareas. Following from the work of the Range and Capacity Review into future carerequirements for older people, the Scottish Government’s Joint Improvement Teampublished guidance in June 2007 to assist local agencies in capacity planning andcommissioning services to meet local needs.
We are also fundinga dementia improvement programme with NHS Forth Valley and the Dementia Services Development Centreto explore ways of better managing the care of people with dementia and preventunnecessary admissions to care homes and acute wards. The programme will be evaluatedin 2008.
