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REGULATION OF HEALTH CARE SUPPORT STAFF AND SOCIAL CARE SUPPORT STAFF IN SCOTLAND

Dear Colleague

CONSULTATION ON THE REGULATION OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE STAFF

We enclose a consultation paper on proposals for the regulation of health and social care support staff.

This is an important issue and we would welcome your views on the issues raised in the paper including which support staff should be regulated and who should regulate them.

We are inviting consultation responses to reach us by 27 August 2004 and we would be grateful if you could respond to:
Laurie Whyte
Nursing and AHP Regulation and Education Branch
GE-19
Scottish Executive Health Department
St Andrew’s House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

The consultation paper can also be accessed online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/view/views.asp

Miss Anne Jarvie	Ms Kate Vincent
Chief Nursing Officer	Director of Policy Co-ordination
	Social Work Services Inspectorate

A. INFORMATION ON YOUR CONSULTATION

CONSULTATION ON REGULATION OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE SUPPORT STAFF IN SCOTLAND

Responding to this consultation paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by 27 August 2004. Please send your response to:
Laurie.Whyte@Scotland.gsi.gov.uk
or
Nursing and AHP Regulation and Education Branch
GE.19
Scottish Executive Health Department
St Andrew’s House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG.

If you have any queries contact Laurie Whyte on 0131 244 2488.

We would be grateful if you could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to (using the consultation questionnaire if appropriate) as this will aid our analysis of the responses received.

This consultation, and all other SE consultation exercises, can be viewed online at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

The Scottish Executive now has an email alert system for SE consultations (SEconsult). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new SE consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SE distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SE consultations activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Access to consultation responses

We will make all responses available to the public in the Scottish Executive Library by 2 August 2004 unless confidentiality is requested. All responses not marked confidential will be checked for any potentially defamatory material before being logged in the library or placed on the website.

B. RESPONDEE INFORMATION FORM

Please complete the details below and attach it with your response. This will help ensure we handle your response appropriately:

C. The Scottish Executive Consultation Process

Consultation is an essential and important aspect of Scottish Executive working methods. Given the wide-ranging areas of work of the Scottish Executive, there are many varied types of consultation. However, in general Scottish Executive consultation exercises aim to provide opportunities for all those who wish to express their opinions on a proposed area of work to do so in ways which will inform and enhance that work.

While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and comments, which should be directed to the relevant public body. Consultation exercises may involve seeking views in a number of different ways, such as public meetings, focus groups or questionnaire exercises.

Typically, Scottish Executive consultations involve a written paper inviting answers to specific questions or more general views about the material presented. Written papers are distributed to organisations and individuals with an interest in the area of consultation, and they are also placed on the Scottish Executive web site enabling a wider audience to access the paper and submit their responses¹. Copies of all the responses received to consultation exercises (except those where the individual or organisation requested confidentiality) are placed in the Scottish Executive library at Saughton House, Edinburgh (K Spur, Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh, EH11 3XD, telephone 0131 244 4552).

The views and suggestions detailed in consultation responses are analysed and used as part of the decision making process. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise the responses received may:

indicate the need for policy development or review
inform the development of a particular policy
help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals
be used to finalise legislation before it is implemented

If you have any comment about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to:

¹ http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations

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