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The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 took effect on 1 April 2018. Provisions include the right to an adult carer support plan to identify each adult carer’s personal outcomes so that their eligible needs are supported. Local authorities must consider whether support to a carer should take the form of, or include, a break from caring.

The Scottish Government supports local authorities with their duty to offer eligible adult carers a short break as part of the implementation of the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 by:

• including an additional £66 million in the 2018-19 budget to support additional expenditure by local government on social care, including for implementation of the Carers Act;
• Publishing statutory guidance to accompany the Act which covers the provision of short breaks and provides examples of what a short break may consist of;
• Funding of the Coalition of Carers in Scotland (COCIS) to produce a leaflet on short breaks under the Act for use by local authorities;
• Funding Shared Care Scotland to maintain an online short breaks directory that local authorities can access;
• Supporting the development of a short breaks services statement template by a group of local authority representatives and Shared Care Scotland.

No analysis has been carried out specifically on the impact of adult respite care on the number of primary care admissions. Section 4.6.7 of the “Scotland’s Carers” publication published 24 March 2015 talks about the impact of short breaks or respite. The Carers Act Monitoring and Evaluation Group is currently carrying out an Evaluability Assessment and this will be looking at what data currently exists on respite and what the priorities are for further analysis going forward.

There is currently no centrally held data for the number of people entitled to an adult respite care break. The new Carers Census will collect data from Carer's Centres and local authorities about Carers who have an adult care support plan, whether they have a need for a respite care break and whether they received a respite care break. Initial data will be available later in 2018.

The "Valuing Carers 2015" report authored by Professor Sue Yeandle (University of Sheffield) and Dr Lisa Buckner (University of Leeds) estimates that carers in Scotland provided care services to the value of £10.8 billion in 2015.

The following table shows the numbers of deaths from (a) external causes which cause hypoxia and (b) fetal hypoxia. It is not practical to provide figures for deaths from all the other diseases in which hypoxia may play a part.

Deaths for which the underlying cause was either (a) an external cause of hypoxia or (b) fetal hypoxia, registered in Scotland from 1999 to 2016.

The Scottish Government supports development of trauma-informed services and work is underway to raise awareness of the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences amongst various sectors.

Education Scotland has developed a range of professional learning resources and support materials to support implementation of nurturing approaches across Scottish schools. These include the document “ Applying Nurture as a Whole School Approach ”, a framework for self-evaluation of a Nurturing approach in schools and Early Learning and Childcare settings. https://education.gov.scot/improvement/documents/inc55applyingnurturingapproaches120617.pdf . All materials complement development of trauma-informed schools, offering guidance on meeting the needs of all children and young people but particularly those who have experienced early adversity and trauma.

Education Scotland are developing additional professional learning materials which give further guidance and support for children who have experienced early adversity and trauma, and curricular materials to help children and young people develop an understanding of early adversity and trauma. It is hoped that these will be available in the academic session 2018-19.

In June 2017, a report was published by the multi-disciplinary Scottish Adverse Childhood Experiences Hub, hosted by NHS Health Scotland, to inform thinking about the impact of adverse childhood experiences within education. http://www.healthscotland.scot/media/1517/tackling-the-attainment-gap-by-preventing-and-responding-to-adverse-childhood-experiences.pdf In March 2018, a conference was held by Education Scotland, NHS Health Scotland and the Scottish Government to share best practice on addressing adverse childhood experiences in education.

http://www.healthscotland.scot/events/2018/march/relationships-and-resilience-addressing-childhood-adversity-to-support-childrens-learning-and-wellbeing

In May 2017, NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Government published “ Transforming Psychological Trauma: A Knowledge and Skills Framework for the Scottish workforce ”. The Reference and Implementation Group for this Framework now includes representatives of Education Scotland and it is currently developing a training plan to support the workforce to put necessary trauma training in place. This Group will consider how this work can be applied in schools, including how it fits with existing practice around nurturing approaches and development of trauma informed practices in schools.

The Cost Recovery Scheme is administered by the DWP on behalf of the Scottish Government and all recoveries are paid directly to the Health Boards. Although the Scottish Government does not therefore hold information on the amounts recovered by Health Boards individually, total amounts recovered, by year, are detailed in the following table.

The Scottish Government provided funding to NHS Lothian in 2017 to support the addition of a VOICES survey component into an evaluation of several other methods of capturing bereaved carer feedback. This work is being taken forward by NHS Lothian and is supported by the City of Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, and by Marie Curie.

Extensive preparatory work is required to conduct this study and this is underway. Navigating this process and identifying potential barriers and solutions to the effective administration of such surveys will be one of the key lessons from this project.

The Scottish Government looks forward to receiving the findings of the study in due course.

Information on consultant numbers, of which consultants working in surgical specialities is a sub category, is published by ISD Scotland and is available at the following web links:

Data from 1997-2007 can be found here: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Historic-Data/WFB03_B04_HB_REG.xls

Data from 2007-Dec 17 can be found here: https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2018-03-06/Medical_Trend_D2017.xls

Due to developments in the NHS Research Scotland infrastructure, directly comparable data across the clinical specialties is only available from 2015-16. The following table shows patient recruitment to clinical trials by year, broken down by the 27 NHS Research Scotland clinical specialties. The 2017-18 figures are subject to final verification.