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This data is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government, in its Ten Year Mental Health Strategy (2017 – 27), recognised the unique challenges students face. The findings and comments in the Survey reflect these challenges. The Scottish Government is already investing in student mental health and wellbeing through its support for NUS Scotland’s Think Positive initiative. All universities and colleges are also being asked to develop a strategy for mental health and work with NUS Scotland and their local student association to develop a Student Mental Health Agreement. In addition, colleges have access to a ring-fenced £50.5m Access and Inclusion Fund which they can use to ensure that every student has an equal chance of completing their studies, including students requiring mental health support.

A Student Mental Health and Well-Being Working Group has been established to collaboratively support the implementation of the 2018-19 Programme for Government commitment to provide more than 80 additional counsellors in Further and Higher Education over the next four years, with an investment of around £20 million. Representatives from the university and college sector, including Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland, NHS Scotland and Health and Social Care Partnerships are included in this Group, alongside other key stakeholders. I am sure the Group will want to consider contact permissions.

This information is not held centrally. The member may wish to contact individual Health Boards to obtain this information.

This data is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information in the manner requested. Prior to June 2015 arrangements for pharmacists in GP practices were local agreements put in place at Board level. However, from June 2015 the Primary Care Fund was allocated to Boards to recruit pharmacists with advanced clinical skills training, or those undertaking the training, to GP practices.

Therefore data for centrally funded posts exists from June 2015 onwards.

As at March 2019, Boards indicated they have recruited 320.2 wte pharmacists and 90.6 wte technicians to GP practices. The breakdown by Board is as follows :

The Scottish Government does not hold information on how many GPs offer private GP services.

Information on the number of prescription issued and uncollected within the time periods requested is not readily available.

Each community pharmacy contractor will have a standard operating procedure for dispensing medicine which will include how to deal with uncollected items. However, it is common practice for any medicines not collected and which have not left the premises to be returned to stock for re-use if appropriate, and no reimbursement payment is made for the medicine in this case. Prescription forms for uncollected medicines are then passed by community pharmacies to NHS National Services Scotland Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services for processing, endorsed by the pharmacy as “item not collected”.

The reasons why a prescription item may be uncollected are multifaceted. However, a new medicine intervention support tool has been introduced allowing community pharmacists to provide structured and tailored support to patients. This should increase adherence to new medicines, in turn reducing the number of uncollected items due to poor adherence.

The Scottish Government has not issued any specific guidance on the reuse of uncollected prescriptions. Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services and Community Pharmacy Scotland publish Endorsing Guidance which provides guidance on how to endorse prescriptions for any items not collected.

ALISS is an on-line directory service, openly accessible to all, which lists community assets and connects people with sources of support in their area to help them to manage their own health conditions effectively. The directory includes sources of support in the community across the full range of health and care services, not just mental health. It does not record information about referrals made by GPs. Information on the number of referrals broken down by NHS board is therefore not available.

This information is not held centrally. It may be available on request from health boards.

The number of admissions from care homes to NHS hospitals for each NHS Board is shown in the following table, by calendar year. It should be noted that an individual patient may be counted more than once if they were admitted from a care home on multiple separate occasions.