Chamber and committees

[Inaudible.]—national health service—

Before I ask my questions, I want to say to Dr Jackson that I am really interested in the development of the national oversight observatory and repository for Scotland, and that it would be great to hear more about that come May next year, when we have more information about it.

My first question is for Claire Sweeney. You talked about linking spending to outcomes, and the importance of community planning partnerships. Are there specific people who should be on community planning partnerships? Are there people who are not on them but should be? Are there links that the community planning partnerships should be making? I know that there is variation across local authorities when it comes to who sits on those partnerships.

As a wee aside, you mentioned measuring the link between spending and outcomes. Does that sometimes get in the way when things are difficult to measure? Does it mean that the focus is not applied in the right way?

I am interested in your mention of the impact of shame and guilt on people’s ability to participate in public life and the huge impact that that has on mental health, which will be a massive issue in our recovery.

Back in January, Mary Glasgow spoke about how brutal and unfair the cut in universal credit was and how it had a huge impact on children and families, not only practically and financially but emotionally. She said that that sent a message about society’s view of people’s needs and created shame and guilt. Often, the media do not help with that perception.

Notwithstanding all the measures that we bring in to address poverty, are there other things that we can do to help people to feel respected and valued, and to remove the shame and guilt that people find so isolating and that have such a bad impact on their mental health?

How will multiyear funding support better planning?

We have spoken about the comments of Ruth Binks from Inverclyde Council, about the challenge authorities being pathfinders, about the fact that the workforce has skilled up and about the authorities’ ability to manage PEF money growing year on year. In the evidence that we have taken, we have heard about teachers being able to reach into families, understand them better and understand the impacts of poverty. We have also heard that teachers have independently reached similar understandings of what has worked well for families and what has the most impact.

Do you consider that the pathfinder funding approach was successful? What has worked particularly well? Were there particular challenges? Mr Marra has commented about cuts quite a lot but, if we look at the pathfinder approach, that is not really what has gone on there. He mentioned some personal conversations that he has had, but that was not committee evidence. Was it clear enough from the outset that a pathfinder approach was being taken, or is that perhaps a learning point?

Mr Dey made some important points about the collaborative working that has developed and really flourished with the RICs at both the local and national levels. Families seem to have had quite a bit of input and there has been close working with teachers and so on. How can we ensure that families continue to influence policy and decision making not just at the local level, but at the national level, too? How do you intend to do that?

Earlier, you gave us the very good example of Granite Care Consortium—I hope that I got the name right—and front-line staff being able to step up care to prevent people from going into hospital and then to step down that care. How can we measure the effectiveness of our investment in prevention and build that evidence so that we can deliver this right across the board at national level?

It is a work in progress.

We have known for quite a long time from the Christie commission report and so on about the shift that needs to be made from critical to preventative care. Indeed, that is something that I think we can all agree on. Have we looked at the level of unmet need and what it would cost to meet it, instead of just looking at how we meet substantial and critical needs? Is there a greater cost in not meeting those needs from the point of view of prevention and keeping people well?

I have a short question to finish up. Has any work been done on, or is there any interest in having, a dashboard of wellbeing indicators from which we can get feedback from individuals on how they are doing? I am stealing that idea from the Education, Children and Young People Committee, which I also sit on. As we have seen from the evidence, data can be heard to measure and it can be difficult to get the information. Is that something that you have looked at or would consider looking at in the future?