Chamber and committees

Sometimes it is very difficult to build that evidence base. I gave the example about stepped-up and stepped-down care, but can I—or, indeed, those folk in Aberdeen—tell you in the here and now how many folk have been prevented from going into hospital? That is a very difficult thing to do. It is not so easy to work out what that stepping up has or has not done.

However, we know that the approach has been helpful for people. We can make the broad assumption—and it would not be far off the mark—that it has probably saved a lot of people from going in through the hospital front door. It is also one of the reasons for the lower number of delayed discharges in Aberdeen compared with many of our other cities. As I have said, these things are sometimes very difficult to measure, particularly in the short term, but the broad assumption that the approach has been helpful in keeping folk out of acute services would not be off the mark.

I am not afraid of pinching, stealing or plagiarising, Ms Callaghan. We will have a look at the dashboard that education is using and consider whether it would be useful to us as we move forward.

It is challenging—there is absolutely no doubt about that. A lot is going on in the social care sector. I am very lucky with the team that I have, which Gillian Barclay is part of and which is headed up by Donna Bell, and what they are doing at present. As I do, they recognise that we cannot wait for the national care service to make some of the change that is required. That means that we are having to do a lot of work—much of it at pace—to try to ensure that we are doing our level best for people in the here and now as well as formulating what change is required for the future.

For example, Gillian Barclay is looking on a daily basis at the pressures on social care right across the country; she is involved in the social care gold group, which meets fortnightly, and in my discussions with the cabinet secretary about health and social care partnerships, national health service boards and local authorities so that we improve the current situation.

The committee will be well aware of the pressures out there at the moment. We are not trying to hide from the fact that those pressures are out there and what the cabinet secretary and I and the team are doing is trying to ensure that the best practice that is going on out there is exported across the country. We are giving help and advice where we can to health and social care partnerships, NHS boards and local authorities in order to meet the challenge that is most definitely there.

I have said previously to the committee that we are at a precarious time in the pandemic. Lots of folk think that the pandemic period is over, but there are still huge pressures on the workforce. There are still folks off with Covid—the number is lessening, thank goodness, but other pressures are on the go at the moment. We are doing our best to be helpful in alleviating some of those pressures so that we can get back to some kind of normality.

A huge amount is going on and, as I say, I am very lucky to have the team that I have in Government. They are very active and we will continue to work at pace, not only on the formulation of the national care service but on reinvigoration as we recover from the pandemic.

We asked a number of questions in the consultation in order to get the views of stakeholders, including the BMA, and folks with lived experience. No decision has been taken on that move.

We want to track what is happening on the ground to ensure that our investment is making a real difference to young people and their families. Ms Todd talked about the £15 million investment in local authorities. We know that some local authorities have responded more quickly than others to utilise those resources and that others are taking longer. We need to ensure that they speed up. Beyond that, they need to recognise that the moneys that we have made available will flow into next year, so they have the comfort of knowing that the resource will be there. All of our expectations are that the money is best utilised for the good of children in every area.

The other aspect of tracking outcomes is looking at the data that is currently available and considering what changes we need to make. For example, we have the annual health and wellbeing census, which is one of a number of sources that the Government uses to track the wellbeing of young people, but we need to go beyond that, and the pandemic has taught us some lessons in that regard.

During the pandemic, the support that we provided to Young Scot to undertake the lockdown lowdown survey provided us with useful insights into the particular impacts that the pandemic and associated restrictions had on children and young people. This year, we will commission an independent evaluation of our children and young people’s community wellbeing supports and services, and we will ensure that we are listening to the voices of those who use and seek access to those services.

Those are the kinds of things that we need to do. We need to listen to the voices of lived experience to see what is working and we need to track to ensure that the resourcing that we are making available is actually getting it right for young people.

Can I come in on the team aspect?

We fully intend to keep the Promise and we intend to ensure that we deal with the difficulties that were highlighted in the independent report on adult social care. In order for us to be able to do that, we need to shift the financial alignment and the balance of investment that we make in this area so that we are not spending constantly on crisis intervention, which is often the case, but can spend on prevention. That will free up even more resource to do that and, of course, by doing it that way, we also lessen the human cost of not getting this right.

We carried out a CRWIA screening in February 2021. The Government has adopted a consistent approach to rights and equality that has been used across all the protected categories when assessing deliverables in the mental health transition and recovery plan. Our mental health, equalities and human rights forum is central to that.

Crucially, we continue to involve children and young people in all aspects of our focused actions on mental health and wellbeing. As Ms Todd and I have reiterated again and again today, lived experience should be at the heart of all that we do.

For example, the involvement of members of the Scottish Youth Parliament enriches the work of the Scottish Government and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities children and young people’s mental health joint delivery board. We have attached to that two participation officers who focus on children’s and young people’s engagement.

We will write to the committee regarding a publication date, but I would say to all members that we have an ambition and we will meet that ambition. Folk have to recognise that we have had two years of a global pandemic. That means that some of the work that we want to undertake has been put to one side in order to deal with the real crisis that everyone has faced because of coronavirus.

We are making moves to improve. The new national data set for psychological therapies and CAMHS, for example, will provide individual level data for the first time, including experience and outcome measures. I think that that is a major move forward.