Chamber and committees

As part of its Faith and Belief Engagement Strategy, Scottish Government regularly meets with representatives from a wide variety of faith and belief communities across Scotland to discuss issues of interest to them. This has included discussions with officials developing the Hate Crime Strategy. Those representatives were recently provided with a factsheet, clarifying aspects of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and which is intended to be disseminated by those representatives through Churches and other places of worship, along with wider faith and belief communities across Scotland.

Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act: factsheet - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Ambulance Service is currently in the final stages of evaluating the work of the Integrated Clinical Hub (ICH) across 2023 and this evaluation will be shared with Scottish Government.

The Integrated Clinical Hub is made up of a variety of clinical staff, which can flex as demand dictates across a 24/7 model but the core roles are:

• 41 clinical advisors (Nurse and Paramedic level).
• 39 GP’s work a range of clinical sessional work every week.
• 146 Advanced Practitioners spend a third of their time within the Integrated Clinical Hub (ICH).
• 9 Senior clinical support managers who support the clinicians and oversee clinical activity and quality.
• 11 staff make up the leadership team who support all aspects of the ICH.

All staff across all roles work nationally to support patients throughout Scotland, whilst they may work in specific locations reflecting their employment base the technology allows them to work seamlessly across Scotland.

Scottish Government (SG) officials have met with Professor Sir Michael Marmot on various occasions during the period April 2021 - April 2024. Professor Marmot’s evidence-based approach to tackle health inequalities underpins the work of our Care and Wellbeing Portfolio and so each engagement has offered important insights into Professor Marmot’s work, helping to inform future policy development.

On 28 June 2022 Government officials met with Professor Marmot to discuss Scottish Government’s Place and Wellbeing Programme and the Care and Wellbeing Portfolio, more broadly, as well as to garner insights into the Marmot cities approach. Since then, officials have engaged with Professor Marmot as part of last year’s Public Health Scotland (PHS) Conference held on 28 November 2023. This included both a short meeting between Professor Marmot and the Permanent Secretary during the conference, plus an evening event in which senior SG officials alongside PHS, Local Government and NHS colleagues discussed priorities to improve Scotland’s health and tackle health inequalities.

In June 2023, SG and PHS soft launched the Care and Wellbeing dashboard as a source of data and intelligence to support the ambitions of the Care & Wellbeing Portfolio. This is structured around the evidence-based Marmot framework Fair Society Healthy Lives (The Marmot Review) - IHE (instituteofhealthequity.org) which looks at the wider social determinants of health, the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age which can lead to health inequalities. Work is underway to integrate this into the Scottish Public Health Observatory ScotPHO profiles (shinyapps.io) (ScotPHO) Online Profiles tool, as a distinct Care and Wellbeing profile, to provide a single repository of public health intelligence to support local action to tackle health inequalities.

The Scottish Government remains eager to learn more from Professor Marmot’s work in our wider ambition to improve health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The Digitisation of records is an operational responsibility of individual Health Boards and GP practices, therefore, it may be available from local Health Boards.

Corporate governance and accountability arrangements for public bodies are in place and built around an established series of statutory and administrative mechanisms. These ensure consistent processes and parameters, based on the principles in the Scottish Public Finance Manual, within which public bodies are required to operate in terms of the stewardship of public money, propriety and ethics.

This is supplemented by framework agreements that Scottish Government has in place with most public bodies setting out respective roles and responsibilities, including requirement for bodies to set plans which contribute to achievement of the National Performance Framework outcomes, including tackling poverty. These activities and the sponsorship and relationship arrangements the Scottish Government has with public bodies helps ensure that Scottish Ministers priorities are delivered.

Scottish Government funding to local authorities is allocated using a relative needs-based formula, taking into account disadvantage and various other considerations, including levels of deprivation. While local authorities decide how to spend their available finances they are guided by a set of national and local outcomes, with the Equality Act and associated specific duties providing a framework to help local authorities pay due regard to equality issues.

Specifically, local authorises, and other certain public bodies, in Scotland are subject to the Fairer Scotland Duty, which places a legal responsibility on them to actively consider how they can reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socio-economic disadvantage, when making strategic decisions.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-26524 on 23 April 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The NHS Scotland Youth Academy aims to enhance opportunity for Scotland’s young people to join the health and social care workforce. It is currently engaged in developing learner pathways, raising awareness of career opportunities and creating connections between schools and employers.

The Youth Academy is bringing together local partners from public and third sector organisations to further opportunities for young people in Health and Social Care. A key focus of work includes the delivery, in collaboration with Skills Development Scotland (SDS), of a new pathway pilot qualification. It will prepare and inspire senior secondary school pupils for entering into careers in health and social care. The pathway pilot is running during the 2023-24 academic year across Highland, Tayside and Clydebank (NHS Golden Jubilee). Additionally, the Youth Academy is supporting the relaunch of the Future Nurse Programme. This aims to raise awareness of nursing careers with primary-aged young people in the Highlands and Clydebank initially.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery is responsible for driving clinically-led service redesign and transformation in care across NHS Scotland. It consists of a number of national improvement programmes which are focussed on individual Scottish Government strategic priority areas.

The Programme Team workplans for 2024-25 are still in the process of being finalised and will be approved by Scottish Government.

A summary of the CfSD national programmes of work are as follows:

Modernising Patient Pathways (MPP) Programme: The MPP team deliver national improvements in planned care and support front line clinical teams to develop and implement sustainable improvements in service delivery. A key focus of the team is on developing national clinical pathways and supporting boards to increase the use of Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Discharge Patient Initiated Review (PIR).

National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU): The NECU team supports improved access to care by providing a consistent approach to national demand and capacity assessment and allocation as well as providing waiting list validation to ensure lists are up to date.

Unscheduled Care Programme: The Unscheduled Care Programme delivers support and develops improvement tools to help Boards to manage urgent and unscheduled care capacity and capability, including Optimising Flow Navigation Centre (FNC) services, hospital-at-home models and developing pathways to support care home access to urgent care.

Cancer Improvement and Earlier Diagnosis Programme: The Cancer Improvement and Earlier Diagnosis team drives NHS Scotland’s cancer strategic priorities and plays a key role in delivering Scotland’s 10-year cancer strategy, including working with Boards to ensure the Framework for Effective Cancer Management (FECM) is embedded.

National Endoscopy Programme: The National Endoscopy Programme supports Boards to deliver the Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan. This includes supporting the deployment of the new Endoscopy Reporting System and working with NHS Scotland Academy to promote and maximise training opportunities around non-medical endoscopy and cystoscopy.

Innovation Programme: The Innovation team manages the Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) Pathway, which is designed to identify and support national adoption of high-impact innovations at pace.

National Green Theatres Programme: The Green Theatres Programme supports NHS Boards to meet the net zero commitments for NHS Scotland through reducing the carbon footprint of theatres and delivering more environmentally sustainable surgery.

Planned Care Programme: The Planned Care Programme is responsible for monitoring planned care performance across all NHS Scotland Boards. It also leads national improvement work around Trauma and Orthopaedics, Ophthalmology and Radiology.