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For the purposes of the concordat commitment in relation to the additional 10,000 respite weeks, the Scottish Government, COSLA and ADSW agreed that local authorities would use the Audit Scotland definition of respite. This covers overnight respite in a care home, other overnight respite not in a care home, day centre respite and other daytime respite, by categories of children 0-17 with disabilities, adults aged 18 to 64 and older people aged 65+.

The Guidance on Short Breaks (Respite) issued jointly by the Scottish Government and COSLA provides a broad definition of short breaks (respite) including befriending schemes where volunteers provide short breaks.

The Scottish Health Council is committed to developing and improving its volunteer and public participation structures and, following the independent review of its organisational functions and structure, is now in the process of reviewing these elements. The review, which is being led by the chairman of the Scottish Health Council, involves a wide range of stakeholders and individuals, including local advisory council members and will enable the Scottish Health Council to develop a new strategy for public involvement within the restructured organisation.

In response to the recent questionnaire from Infertility Network Scotland, the following NHS boards consider they are partially complying with national guidance on IVF treatment and are continuing to work towards full compliance:

NHS Fife,

NHS Forth Valley,

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde,

NHS Lothian and

NHS Tayside.

The remainder of boards consider they are fully compliant with national guidance.

Our Long Term Conditions Action Plan, published in June this year, asks NHS boards and the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland to review the structure of each managed clinical network to ensure that people with long-term conditions, their carers and the voluntary sector are enabled to participate in the planning, delivery and evaluation of services, drawing on experience from the Hearty Voices and similar programmes.

The action is intended to underpin one of the core principles of all managed clinical networks: that they should include strong patient and voluntary sector participation. This represents a practical way of implementing our aim that improvements in the quality of healthcare services should draw directly on people''s own experience of service provision.

The Voices Scotland programme, run by Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland and its third sector partners, provides training and support to lay people with heart disease, stroke, diabetes and respiratory conditions who wish to participate effectively in the work of their local managed clinical networks, as well as in wider initiatives relating to the NHS.

The information is provided in the following table:

Local Authority	Number of Unpaid Carers
Aberdeen City	25,111
Aberdeenshire	29,036
Angus	12,133
Argyll and Bute	10,790
Clackmannanshire	8,690
Dumfries and Galloway	22,216
Dundee City	14,027
East Ayrshire	21,844
East Dunbartonshire	12,862
East Lothian	13,095
East Renfrewshire	9,772
Edinburgh City	47,404
Eilean Siar	2,933
Falkirk	21,929
Fife	49,522
Glasgow City	66,371
Highland	29,523
Inverclyde	9,892
Midlothian	14,192
Moray	11,628
North Ayrshire	18,921
North Lanarkshire	48,957
Orkney Islands	1,989
Perth and Kinross	19,082
Renfrewshire	24,087
Scottish Borders	12,502
Shetland Islands	2,246
South Ayrshire	15,283
South Lanarkshire	38,023
Stirling	12,050
West Dunbartonshire	13,132
West Lothian	18,086
All Scotland	657,328

Source: Scottish Household Survey, 2007-08.

A Short Breaks Working Group with representation from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA), local authorities and carers'' organisations is considering this issue.

The Carers Strategy for Scotland, to be published in the first half of 2010, will include a chapter on short breaks.

The Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 gave ministers powers to regulate charges for social care. However, the Scottish Government made clear at the time that it would support self-regulation by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) if that achieved consistency. It also made a commitment to hold these powers in reserve until implementation of COSLA''s guidance on charging was evaluated. In its Stage 1 Report on the Bill, the Health and Community Care Committee of the Scottish Parliament endorsed the approach of COSLA in preparing the guidance, and the reserve powers being taken by ministers.

The evaluation of the guidance began in 2004, and revised guidance was issued in 2006. Key stakeholders, including the Scottish Government, were involved in the consultation process. COSLA issued further updated guidance in April 2009 recommending a consistent framework for charging and encouraging councils to demonstrate that they are following best practice.

We continue to support the aim of the COSLA guidance to achieve consistency, whilst allowing for local authority discretion in ensuring that charges are reasonable for each individual client.

Whilst it is a matter for individual NHS boards whether patients can be referred to other NHS boards for infertility treatment, Infertility Network Scotland are working directly with NHS boards to ensure that that the voices of patients are heard at a local level in the planning of infertility services in Scotland.

This is a matter for individual NHS boards.

This information is not collected or held centrally. di