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The Scottish Government welcomes the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health's State of Child Health report which reaffirms the work currently underway across government to improve child health. The Scottish Government is carefully considering all of the recommendations in the report to identify any further work needed.

Many of the report's recommendations are already being taken forward in Scotland including: rolling out the Family Nurse Partnership to reach every eligible teenage mother in Scotland by the end of 2018; prioritisation and expansion of the health visiting service provided to families; bringing forward a Child Poverty Bill for Scotland; maintaining our commitment to support people in Scotland affected by the UK Government's welfare cuts; providing a Baby Box for all newborn babies; progress in achieving the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly best practice standards; placing relationships, sexual health and parenthood education at the centre of the school curriculum; achieving the target of halving exposure to second hand smoke through the Take it Right Outside campaign five years early; investing in a range of programmes to support and encourage healthy eating; investing in free school meals for all primary one to three children; investing in physical education in schools; exceeding our target of delivering 150 Community Sport Hubs across all local authorities; working on a new Mental Health Strategy which will focus on the earliest and most effective interventions to prevent children and young people from becoming ill; and committing to producing an overarching child health and wellbeing strategy to consolidate all of the actions.

Although the mitigation of congestion on local roads within Edinburgh is a matter for the City of Edinburgh Council, the Scottish Government recognises the important contribution that Edinburgh makes to the economy of Scotland. With this in mind, Transport Scotland is currently working with regional and local planning and transport authorities, including City of Edinburgh Council, to undertake a cross boundary multi-modal transport study.

This will assess the impact of current and projected future travel demand on the strategic transport network in the South East of Scotland. It will also assist in identifying options for infrastructure and for other measures which can be considered to improve transport in the Edinburgh area.

The Scottish Government is familiar with the content of recent studies. The Scottish Government recognises the important role that Edinburgh and its region plays in the economy of Scotland. As such, Transport Scotland, on behalf of the Scottish Government, is currently working with regional and local planning and transport authorities to undertake a cross boundary multi-modal transport study to assess the impact of current and projected future travel demand on the strategic transport network in the South East of Scotland.

The National Clinical Strategy is the Scottish Government’s blueprint for health and social care over the next 15 years. It’s one of the key drivers that will help deliver transformational change across our NHS.

Its foundation is to provide care as locally as possible through a whole-team, community-based approach which is vital to the future of the NHS, allowing people to continue to be treated close to home, or in their home, in the majority of cases.

The National Clinical Strategy sets out why the NHS in Scotland needs to adapt in the face of increasing and changing demand, along with significant constraints in terms of workforce and finances. The National Clinical Strategy sits alongside the Health and Social Care Integration and GIRFEC to ensure that there is a comprehensive approach to both improving the health of the population, and the healthcare available.

The Scottish Government has supported and funded Crohn’s and Colitis UK in the production of “Scotland Leading the Way - a National Blueprint for Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Scotland”, which seeks support NHS Boards in improving care and treatment for all people living with inflammatory bowel disease in Scotland.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland funded the SAPPHIRE (Social Science APPlied to Healthcare Improvement REsearch) group at University of Leicester to carry out an independent evaluation of the sepsis VTE collaborative. The evaluation report was published in 2015 and is available on the Scottish Patient Safety Programme website: (http://www.scottishpatientsafetyprogramme.scot.nhs.uk). Information on the breakdown of results by NHS board is not held centrally.

Work is underway to plan for implementation of the recommendations in The Best Start. We will take this planning work forward in partnership with boards, including the Scottish Ambulance Service to develop a comprehensive understanding of the resource implications of the recommendations.

The Scottish Ambulance Service, through funding from the Scottish Government and NHS boards, deliver the ScotSTAR (Scottish Specialist Transport and Retrieval) Service. The service undertakes all neonatal transfers providing a safe and dedicated transport service for a group who, because of their clinical condition, may require an augmented clinical team during transport.

It is for NHS boards to plan and deliver clinical services and ensure that they have the correct staff in place to meet the needs of their services and ensure high quality patient care. As part of this we expect them to have robust workforce plans and recruitment and retention policies in place which take account of health visitor vacancies and retirements.

In addition the Scottish Government has committed to delivering an additional 500 Health Visitors by 2018, and we have invested £3.3 million since 2014 to support additional training.

The work with NHS borders will be completed in May 2017. There will be a networking event in late May to further share the learning from this project and a final report will act as a resource for NHS boards to use in their VTE improvement work.

Day to day decisions on policing matters are a matter for Police Scotland, with the oversight of the Scottish Police Authority. Police Scotland continue to tackle housebreaking through the City’s dedicated housebreaking team and a range of tactics and measures to best serve Edinburgh’s communities. Police Scotland are also delivering local home security conferences and working with partners across the city to tackle the issue of break-ins and pursue offenders.

Record keeping of an individual’s care is an important aspect of a nurse’s role and contributes to ensuring quality of care. As part of their role nurses and midwives must keep clear and accurate records relevant to their practice. This requirement is set out in the revised Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Code, which came in to effect from 31 March 2015, and further details of the requirements can be found at - https://www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/nmc-publications/nmc-code.pdf

In addition as part of our Excellence in Care work programme, led by our Chief Nursing Officer, we will be including work on record keeping.