Chamber and committees

Good morning, cabinet secretary. Clearly, Covid has not hit everybody equally, and people have struggled to access treatment and support. I am interested in what specific changes to approaches and treatment during Covid have had a positive impact. How can those benefits be maximised so that we ensure that we take that learning forward with us and use it to support and help people?

Sorry, convener—my apologies.

Again thinking of the impacts of Covid, we have all realised how isolation arises and how important connections to our families are for us to stay mentally healthy. However, not everybody has that support.

Earlier you spoke about the promise of how the relationships and trust that people build with other people—not just with families, but with organisations that provide support—help them to sustain progress. My question is about how we can sustain that progress. People who are coming through addiction and starting to move on with their lives will have struggles at times. How do we ensure that they are able to connect back in and get the support that they need as they move forward?

I am really interested in the links to colleges and universities and what they are looking for. Will you expand on that?

What work do we need to do with schools and universities to support young people to get the skills that colleges and universities want them to have?

I am interested in the alignment of business links, links into universities and colleges, and collaborative work with them. Will you expand on that, please?

Yes.

I should probably have said earlier that I am a councillor at South Lanarkshire Council. I am also the parent of an autistic child, and I will follow on from Evelyn Tweed’s question with a question about the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.

In a number of cases where kids have been turned down by CAMHS, the parents will have waited a long time for the referral to come through, and there can be a lot of hope behind that. It can be devastating for them and for the children who are refused CAMHS support. You have spoken about the audit and about lots of things being implemented, but I am still hearing that same story from parents. What assurance can you give the parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and other additional support needs that we will find suitable pathways to support those children?

That is really good to hear, but what worries me the most is that sometimes it is all like a big jigsaw in which the pieces do not fit together properly, so they have to be hammered into place. I suppose that the focus of my question is on how we get the various organisations to work together on developing policy to ensure that it works as effectively as possible.

Pre-pandemic, adverse childhood experiences were possibly the biggest public health issue facing Scotland, with poverty being a strong reinforcing factor. Evidence suggests that the resulting toxic stress leads to health problems in adulthood, including heart attacks, strokes and addiction. Indeed, it can even lead to increased cancer rates. Given that there being increased ACEs could have a huge impact on the NHS, how will you look to knit together health and social care partnerships, local authorities and public health agencies in order to develop policies that can provide support and prevention and, down the line, save people from going to the NHS with such problems?

Emma Harper mentioned cancer. Has there been any exploration of the idea of lung cancer screening? It is the most common cancer, and people experiencing deprivation are three times more likely to suffer from it. Has any work been done on that, or is there any intention to carry out any work on that?