Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care
Letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, 22 December 2021
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
Humza Yousaf MSP
Gillian Martin MSP, Convener
Health, Social Care and Sport Committee
Scottish Parliament
22 December 2021
Dear Convener,
National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care
I am writing to inform you of my intention to delay the publication of the National Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care, owing to the rapidly emerging situation in relation to the transmission of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. As the First Minister signalled last week in Parliament, the Omicron variant is transmitting rapidly in Scotland and is responsible for a significant new wave of infections. Given the challenges this presents for the maintenance of Health and Social Care services as we move through the winter, we must rightly focus all of our efforts on mitigating the potential impacts of this new phase of the pandemic. The Scottish Government will do all it can to ensure staff are protected, and we continue to expand the pace of delivery of our booster vaccinations programme to help protect the public. In view of the current situation, it is now my intention to publish the strategy early in 2022 and I will keep the Committee fully informed of progress with planned publication going forward.
Please be assured that, pursuant to our original intention of jointly publishing a national workforce strategy with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) by the end of this year, extensive consultation has already taken place with stakeholders from across the health and social care landscape. In light of that consultation, our National Workforce Strategy will outline a shared vision for the health and social care workforce, which supports a tri-partite ambition of recovery, growth and transformation. In order to ensure we realise that ambition, the strategy will set out our expectations for workforce growth and development to 2030, our commitments to investment and innovation, the expansion of healthcare student training places, activity to support staff-retention, and the actions we will take to engender inclusive working cultures that exemplify the principles of Fair Work.
Meantime, committee members may wish to note that significant work is ongoing in relation to the suite of workforce measures I set out in October, alongside record investment of over
£300 million, to alleviate winter pressures. This includes the planned recruitment of 1,000 additional healthcare support workers by the end of March 2022, our commitment to increase the minimum wage for adult social care to £10.02 per hour, which will rise further to £10.50 per hour following the recently announced Scottish Government budget for 2022-23, and our additional investment of £4 million in wellbeing support to staff this winter, in addition to the £8 million announced as part of the NHS Recovery Plan. The Recovery Plan is backed by over £1 billion of targeted investment in health and social care services, a significant proportion of which will be directed towards investment in frontline staffing, including recruitment of at least 1500 new staff to our National Treatment Centres.
Further, the Committee may wish to note that I have indicatively confirmed planned intakes 2022-23 for undergraduate medicine and nursing and midwifery. In line with our Programme for Government commitment to increase undergraduate medicine places by 500 over the lifetime of this parliament and to double the number of widening access places, we will increase the target intake for undergraduate medicine to over 1300 funded places. Equally, for nursing and midwifery we are committing to a record annual increase in funded places of over 8.7%, taking target intake to over 4800.
I am disappointed that, in light of the changing nature of the pandemic it is not now possible to publish the strategy as originally planned. I am deeply indebted to staff and stakeholders from across the workforce who have given up their time and energy over recent months, to help shape the strategy so far. We will reflect on the learning from this latest phase of the pandemic in anticipation of publishing the strategy as soon as is practicable in 2022. I would like to thank you and committee members for your understanding during this challenging time. My officials and I will keep you fully informed of any further developments, and I trust you find this information useful.
Yours Sincerely
Humza Yousaf