Chamber and committees

Scotland set challenging targets (now standards) to ensure faster access to child and adolescent mental health services as well as psychological therapies for all ages within 18 weeks from referral to treatment. This was undertaken to improve access to mental health services in recognition of the valuable contribution such therapies can have in treating a wide range of mental illness and this includes treatment for infant mental health issues.

These mental health waiting times standards have been included within the Local Delivery Plan Guidance for 2016-17. The inclusion of the mental health waiting times standards will require Boards to develop concise plans focusing on reducing waiting times and on improving access to mental health services within each board in line with local need, including infant mental health services. The plans should include an assessment of the level of access currently provided by the board and with the anticipated level of need locally, including benchmarking with other boards in Scotland.

A child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) balanced scorecard is published by Information Services Division Scotland on a quarterly basis. It allows comparisons between boards on a range of performance measures for these services. The data is collected from a CAMHS benchmarking toolkit. This was created in response to commitment 9 of the mental health strategy. A specialist CAMHS service (Tier 4 CAMHs) data set is also used and this was created in relation to commitment 12. Scottish Government is working to refine these measures and to create an overarching National specialist mental health service key performance indicator suite that will contain measures appropriate to CAMHS as well as other mental health services.

The Draft statutory guidance on Part 4 (Named Person), Part 5 (Child’s Plan) and Part 18 and Section 96 (Assessment of Wellbeing) of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (the Act), was released on 1 December 2015 and can be accessed at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/People/Young-People/gettingitright/publications/revised-draft-guidance

Chapter 10 of the guidance sets out information sharing duties under the Named Person provisions of the Act, with section 10.13 specifically focusing on duties of confidentiality and section 10.14 the disclosure of information provided in breach of a duty of confidentiality.

Under the Act a named person who is not an NHS clinician will not be provided open access to confidential medical notes, any medical information shared with a named person will be a decision for the information holder. All sharing of information within the context of the Act is subject to the Data Protection Act and working within the European Convention on Human Rights. Any information shared, medical or otherwise, must be specific information shared for an identified purpose. These restrictions are the same whether the named person is part of the NHS or not. The Act and the draft statutory guidance provides a framework for information holders to consider what if any relevant information ought to be shared with a named person.

They must consider the following:

That there is specific information that is likely to be relevant to the functions of a named person i.e. it is thought that on receiving the information that the named person is likely to take action to promote, support or safeguard a child or young person’s wellbeing by providing advice, information, support or help to access a service.

They have sought and listened to the views of the child or young person about sharing information (taking into account their age and maturity).

They have sought and listened to the views of parents except if it was contrary to the child’s views or where it was likely to be detrimental to the child’s wellbeing.

If the likely benefit of sharing the information outweighs any likely adverse effect on the wellbeing of the child or young person.

They must conclude that sharing the information would not prejudice the conduct of a criminal investigation or the prosecution of any offence.

Only after all of these considerations have taken place can the information holder share relevant information with a named person, at this time the Act allows for confidential information to be shared that the information holder believes is likely to be relevant and ought to be shared. Any onward sharing of this information is subject to the same considerations.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has already clarified that the kind of information sharing envisaged by the Act is already lawful. The ICO’s statement of 28 March 2013 is available at:

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0041/00418080.pdf

The Scottish Government is not aware of any cases of where a Caldicott guardian is also in a senior management role in ICT. The launch of the NHSScotland Information Security Policy Framework, and the need to appoint Senior Information Risk Owners and improve internal appointing is making it far less likely for any conflicts of interest to occur.

All projects should provide regular financial reports. This would include regular reporting of all costs including final outturn costs. This would include a breakdown of legal matters, external assessment or evaluations and consultancies.

The Scottish Government's response Renewing Scotland's Public Services: priorities for reform in response to the Christie Commission was published in September 2011. We continue to look at how we can further reduce duplication across NHS boards.

The Scottish Government has noted the findings of the Alcohol Care Teams: to reduce acute hospital admissions and improve quality of care report.

Through the alcohol framework which was launched in 2009 the Scottish Government has put in place a number of significant measures aimed at reducing admissions associated with the misuse of alcohol, and to improve treatment services provided by the NHS in Scotland.

This information is not held centrally.

The information requested is not held centrally. Any information available on overspend and underspend for individual ICT projects would be held by the appropriate individual organisations across the public sector and it is a matter for those bodies to provide this information. This would apply to information on overspend and underspend of NHS board's projects in each year since 2007. It would be the responsibility of individual health board's to provide this information.

The Scottish Government hold no information on the ICT qualifications of NHS board’s senior managers. It is the responsibility of NHS boards to ensure appropriately qualified staff are in place. All Scottish Government staff within the ICT profession are required to participate in an externally accredited career development scheme and make use of this system to record any ICT qualifications.

Distinction awards in Scotland are monitored on the basis of A+, A and B Awards.

The answers are given in the following table:

Year	A+ Award holders	A Award holders	B Award holders	Total
2010-11	1	3	4	8
2011-12	0	2	0	2
2012-13	2	1	3	6
2013-14	0	2	2	4
2014-15	1	0	5	6
2015-16	0	1	1	2
Total	4	9	15	28

Information supplied by the Scottish Advisory Council on Distinction Awards using material provided in its annual reports.