Chamber and committees

Thank you.

There was a great hope when self-directed support came in, but it is probably not doing what we hoped it might do for people. Your opening statements were very helpful, but I want to confirm that you said that the committee needs to look at training social workers with a full understanding of the potential for SDS. The pressures in the sector are a major reason why it cannot be delivered in the way that everybody here would want and the relationship between resources that are required for the assessed need and what we can provide is a real problem in the sector.

Is that a reasonable summary of things that we should look at? Are there any other major issues that we should pick out to tackle in order to ensure that SDS can move forward?

I want to follow up on the points that have been made about an impact assessment. You were concerned that the costs increased more in previous years. Do you have concerns that that will be the case again this year and that local authorities will need to meet the costs that are not in the agreed settlement?

I have a short follow-up question for Justina Murray. The alcohol industry often says that it already puts money into funding services. Do you think that the MUP model or the levy model might allow us, in a better way, to put money into public services and use that across Scotland to support the harms that you have spoken about? How do you see that working?

Dr MacGilchrist, I am interested in the medical community that works in this area. I am sure that you discuss MUP as part of that whole package. Are the medics who work in the area generally quite convinced that MUP has helped and that we should uprate it?

That is helpful—thank you.

I want to be clear. I suppose that, in your modelling, you anticipate that local government will need to make some contribution to costs because you think that there will be an increase in costs, as in the previous three years.

Finally, do boards indicate whether they have reached the point that that is becoming difficult for them? Do they say that they feel that they can continue to work at that 3 per cent level?

It is not that I disagree with that—I was just interested in knowing whether, given that that diverse group is already a whole regulatory body, it made sense for those roles to sit with the HCPC.

I totally agree that regulation is really important. I should declare that I was on the Health and Care Professions Council, although that was about 15 years ago. It regulates a very diverse group of professionals and it is quite used to playing that sort of advanced role. Was there a debate about whether those roles sat neatly on the GMC or the HCPC, given that the HCPC is very skilled in those diverse roles with advanced practices?