Chamber and committees

My second question is for Wendy Panton. What specific actions should be prioritised to improve service delivery? Should scaling up successful things to national level be a priority? For example, our papers mention an Audit Scotland case study about Highland Council’s introduction of primary mental health workers. The evaluation of outcomes from that showed that 78 per cent of young people and 95 per cent of parents felt that the support had mostly or completely helped their situation.

The question was about what specific actions should be prioritised to improve service delivery. The second part was about whether that approach should be one of the priorities.

I will pick up on that. Is there a conflict between the evidence-based approach and the idea of patient participation and co-production? Is there a problem with the two pushing up against each other at times? How do we get the two to integrate and work effectively together?

I thank the panel members for coming. I have a question for Margaret McKay. She mentioned that we need co-ordinated national and local messaging to the public. I totally accept that that is the case. What difference has the patient participation group made in her area? How effective has it been and what positives can we take out of it to improve the experiences of patients more widely?

A lot of the things that have been mentioned came up. Self-referral, waiting lists and being left in limbo were issues. People felt that they did not hear anything for quite a long time.

Another issue was that there is not enough information and people struggle to access the pathways. People who are already vulnerable—elderly people and people who are in poverty, or do not have confidence, or are suffering from depression, for example—were highlighted, and the lack of knowledge of autism came up.

There were some positives, as well. Social prescribing is seen as particularly good for people who do not have great connections in the local community and feel a bit isolated. It has made a massive difference to them. People were also getting some really good services through pharmacies, including the ability to access urgent medication to prevent an ambulance having to be sent at very short notice.

Certainly, that feeling that their experiences are being invalidated and that they are not being believed or respected comes through. The quote from one of your young people, a 16 year-old, about how normal and accepted sexual harassment is in schools should be quite shocking and devastating.

Moving on from that, I know you have called upon the Scottish Government to ensure that all schools have a legal duty to prevent and tackle sexual harassment. Could you tell us more about why you think that is so important and what difference it could make?

That is really helpful, and it leads me to my next question, which is also for you. Do you do any explicit work around neurodiversity? There has been a huge increase in autism. In schools, 30 per cent of children have additional support needs—obviously, that is a wider section. Often, with autism, you find that the subtleties of sex and relationship education do not get through, so you need to be extremely explicit and direct, which can be an issue for boys with autism in terms of their understanding. Has anything specific been done to tackle that? Has anything been done to determine whether the current approach is effective, and whether there is a bit of a gap there that we should be looking at?

I will direct my questions to Carolyn Fox McKay. First, I say well done to Girlguiding Scotland, for doing the survey of 500 young women aged between seven and 21. It is very good to have that information. It certainly shines a light on harassment and violence in schools.

Will you share your thoughts about what stood out to you and your colleagues when you looked at the results of the survey? Could you also tell us a bit more about the negative factors that you mentioned earlier when Marie McNair asked the question about the positive work that is being done? What have you come up against?

I want to ask about early years provision. Laura Tomson has said that quite a bit of information is being collected on young people, because they are a captive audience, and I am quite interested in hearing about what we are doing with the youngest children in nursery and early years education. There is, for example, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children’s pants rule, which is all about privacy, consent and speaking up at a really young age and making it clear that both girls and boys are core to prevention in that respect.

What kind of work is going on around early years with regard to helping children speak up and challenge language through, for example, role play and practice? Are we, for example, treating gender-based violence as being unacceptable in the same way that racism is, but going back a few steps to address the language that underlies it in the early years?

I am not quite sure exactly who to direct that question to—I am happy for anyone to come in on it.

That is fine, you have covered it. Thank you very much, indeed. That was very helpful.