The Scottish Government

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THE CONSULTATION

1. This report presents the findings of a consultation on Draft Guidance prepared to support the implementation of the 4 ^th Edition of "Health For All Children" ¹ in Scotland.

2. The report is in a number of sections. This section provides an introduction to the issues raised in the consultation, as well as a brief outline of the consultation process, methods of analysis and details of respondents. The remaining sections provide an analysis of the responses provided to each of the four main themes of the guidance: the policy context; the core children health programme; targeting support and delivery. For ease of comparison, the titles of the remaining sections of this report match those in the Draft Guidance.

3. Throughout this report, the consultation document will be referred to as the "Draft Guidance", while the planned final document will be referred to as "Guidance". "Hall 4" will be used to refer to the 4 ^th Edition of "Health for All Children".

BACKGROUND

4. The 4 ^th Edition of "Health for All Children" was published by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in February 2003. The Scottish Executive convened a national consensus conference in February 2003 to inform professionals and managers in NHSScotland and partner organisations about Hall 4 and to consider how best to implement its recommendations in Scotland. The outcome of that meeting was a request for the Scottish Executive to provide national guidance on how best to apply the recommended core programme of child health surveillance, screening and health promotion in Scotland, and how to identify and target support for vulnerable children and families. The Women and Children's Unit within the Scottish Executive prepared a draft of this guidance for consultation with the support of a multi-agency reference group (listed at Annex 3 in the Draft Guidance).

THE CONSULTATION PROCESS

5. The Draft Guidance was published in December 2003 and was circulated to a wide variety of organisations and individuals. The complete list is set out at Appendix 2.

6. The Draft Guidance was also published on the Scottish Executive web site. The closing date for submissions was 31 ^st March 2004.

7. A parallel parent consultation exercise was undertaken by Children 1 ^st on behalf of the Scottish Executive. A total of 69 parents participated in focus groups in 8 locations across Scotland between March and June 2004. Each discussion lasted a minimum of 2 hours and included a verbal outline of 'Health for All Children', an introductory activity, and broad questions for the focus group discussion. Staff from Children 1 ^st facilitated the sessions and produced a report which was submitted to the Scottish Executive for consideration with other consultation responses.

SUBMISSIONS

8. A total of 153 responses were received. As no specific questions were identified within the Draft Guidance document, the format of responses was very varied. Responses ranged from a few paragraphs to more than 15 pages. Most respondents made comments on the Draft Guidance overall, together with specific comments on one or more sections. Very few respondents commented in detail on every strand of the Draft Guidance.

9. Responses were received from the following groups ²:

ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

10. In summary, the analysis of the data involved the following stages:

• Input of all responses (scanned or e-mailed) to an Access database.
• Identification of key themes, and analysis of comments into a series of issue-based "books".
• Identification of sub-themes and detailed comments.
• Preparation of the summary report.

11. learly, given the very large volume of information generated by more than 150 responses, it would be impossible for this report to include every point that was highlighted. It should be borne in mind that the report is not a compendium of points, but is a detailed overview of the issues that emerged. The intention is to reflect the range and depth of views submitted and to highlight the emergent themes.

Presentation of the data

12. The presentation of the findings is largely qualitative, reflecting the nature of the responses. Although this summary can give a broad flavour of the points which were made frequently, it would generally be inappropriate to provide more specific quantitative data, for a number of reasons, as follows:

• Not all of the respondents addressed the issues within the Draft Guidance specifically (and even where they did, the same issues were raised by different respondents at different points).
• The process of data entry in some cases required a subjective assessment of the appropriate issue to which particular comments related, making it impossible to count accurately the number of respondents who responded specifically to each question or theme.
• Some responses were submitted on behalf of organisations and represented the views of a number of individuals, making it impossible to identify the actual number of people represented by a response.
• A consultation process involves "opting in" and cannot be seen to be representative.
• The purpose of the consultation was to identify contributions to the debate rather than to determine the "weight" of views.

13. In many cases, the same views were expressed by a range of different types of organisation and by individuals. It would be impossible to note, for each issue, all of the types of respondent, as this would often involve lengthy lists. Variations by type of respondent have generally been identified only in the very small number of cases where there is a clear difference.

14. The report sometimes uses the same wording as a response, not always as a "quote". This avoids changing the sense of responses, and respondents were always clear that their comments would form the basis of a report. Specific quotes are used to highlight particular points.

15. Six respondents requested that their responses remain confidential. While these responses have been analysed as part of this consultation report, no direct quotes have been included in the text.

THE WAY FORWARD

16. The summary material in this report provides a good indication of the range and depth of views on the implementation of Hall 4, and will inform the development of the final Guidance.

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