Chamber and committees

This is quite a big question: what are the key lessons, and what priorities would you like the Scottish Government to look at for this year specifically?

I should have declared an interest as a councillor on South Lanarkshire Council, where Tony McDaid is the head of education.

I am interested in how you will incorporate young people’s views. How do we move forward on that and how do those views influence you?

Where should this committee’s focus be going forward? Where can we offer best value?

I think that our teachers, our pupils and their parents have all been absolutely incredible throughout this situation, so I extend a huge “Thank you” to all of you.

We have already spoken a little bit about supporting people’s mental health. I am quite interested in what worked, what did not work and what recommendations there are going forward. Pupils really did step up and demonstrate their resilience. At the evidence sessions, it was clear that they had a huge amount of empathy and respect for their teachers—it felt as though teachers and pupils were a team, which I thought was really nice.

My second question is about how your organisations will make sure that young people’s views are listened to and acted on going forward. In the evidence that we got, there were some suggestions that were really quite different, such as putting things up on Google Classroom so that young people could comment anonymously throughout. Some young people with additional needs who struggle with exams said that, if they had some music on in the background, that could make a really big difference to them. How we can incorporate those views?

That is helpful—thank you.

You have already answered a lot of my questions. Adverse childhood experiences are often on the edges of lots of other things that we talk about. I feel that the film “Resilience” should be shown everywhere or, at least, to everyone in the public sector so that people really understand how toxic stress changes the brain and how it can impact on people in later life as well as affect their health and wellbeing all the way through.

Is there a case for having a specific focus on ACEs? Should we be working with young people on the issue, talking to them about it in schools and asking them to consider whether they have any ACEs in their own backgrounds? I know that a lot of people who work in public health and social work have suffered quite a lot of ACEs in their lives themselves, so despite all the negative impacts, there are also some positives to consider.

This is not about just writing down a list of things that might have happened to a person and then saying to them, “You’re going to have problems in your life because of these things.” Instead, we need to sit down and look at and understand the issues. This is about being in control and having a sense of wellbeing as well as about understanding and appreciation.

It was about doing more with fewer people.

It is fine to ask for general comments.

I thank everyone for their contributions today. I want to ask about the role of technology, which I will come at from two angles. I have had conversations in which I was told that not all the NHS vacancies could be filled at the moment and that more things need to be done with fewer people, which is about the rapid adoption of technology to help in that regard. One of the examples that I was given was about radiology, where there is an artificial intelligence diagnosis but the radiologist does the more complex work. That issue is for Dr Zamvar to consider.

The other issue is preventative care, which possibly Ross Barrow could consider, with regard to bed modelling to keep people out of hospital and look after them at home, or to get them out of hospital more quickly when they are in hospital. It is about the use of technology practices that might help colleagues advance their career by taking on more complex roles. The question is how they would do that.