Chamber and committees

Home care stoma services are provided by a partnership of social care staff and NHS nursing staff, including stoma specialist nurses. NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Orkney and NHS Western Isles have stated that the home care staff in their areas do not provide stoma care, though home care staff in Orkney assist clients with their hygiene needs as required.

Details of the services provided by home care services are given in the following table:

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-15597 on 26 April 2018. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Scottish Government agrees that supporting women of all ages in the labour market is a key priority and that older women face particular challenges. The number of older women in Scotland who chose to work continues to increase and the Scottish Government is committed to enabling them to remain in employment for as long as they wish to.

The Scottish Government has implemented all the recommendations highlighted in the Scottish Commission on Older Women report, continues to provide support to address long standing barriers for women within the labour market to enable a level playing field for women through different interventions, such as:

Workplace Equality Fund

Carer Positive Awards scheme

Close the Gap

Scottish Business Pledge

Friendly Working Scotland Partnership

Women Returner’s programme

Fair Start Scotland

I have asked Colin McConnell, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, to respond. His response is as follows:

The vast majority of staff working in Scotland’s 13 publicly managed prisons are directly employed by the Scottish Prison Service. In addition, there are a number of people who work in our prisons who, for example provide healthcare and are employed by the NHS, and prison based social workers who are employed by local authorities as well as a number of third sector partners.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring a thriving third age for all older people. That is why the Fairer Scotland Action Plan committed to bringing forward a financial health check service with an older people strand: in order to maximise incomes in retirement and boost uptake of Pension Credit and Council Tax Reduction Scheme. We also offer a range of schemes under the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (HEEPS) to support people, including pensioners, who have difficulty in keeping their homes warm.

These measures will help all older people, including women, to increase their incomes and reduce costs.

In the longer term we are taking action to cut the gender pay gap, helping working age women to save for their retirement. Within Every Child, Every Chance: the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan we confirmed our strong intent to do more to tackle this issue and announced a new £750,000 Workplace Equality Fund; to help overcome long standing a systemic issues with recruitment practices and progression in the workplace.

Alongside this, we continue to lobby the UK government about the pensions position of women whose state pension age has been rapidly increased since 2010. This is likely to be contributing to the financial stress of many women pensioners.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling poverty amongst minority ethnic communities. That’s why Every Child, Every Chance: the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan focuses on priority families who are at higher risk of poverty, including minority ethnic families. The final chapter of the Plan sets out an assessment of how each substantive action benefits these families and which of the main drivers it tackles.

For instance, in bringing forward our Financial Health Check, we will work with organisations representing minority ethnic communities to promote our Financial Health Check offer, taking into account any additional support that may be required - for example, around language support and travel costs.

We also published our Race Equality Action Plan in December 2017, which sets out the key actions for the Scottish Government to drive positive change for minority ethnic communities. The Action Plan contains more than 120 actions spanning employment, education, health, housing, poverty, community cohesion and safety for all minority ethnic communities in Scotland.

In Scotland, 59% of working-age adults in poverty after housing costs were living in working households, compared with 66% in the UK.

The Scottish Government is taking a range of initiatives aimed at tackling in-work poverty. For example, as set out in Every Child, Every Chance: the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan , we will undertake a new £12 million programme of intensive key worker support – helping parents who’ve been out of the labour market to get back into work but also, crucially, supporting those parents in low paid jobs to stay in work and progress in their careers.

We’re also offering a range of new funding to help build skills, with a new £10 million Flexible Workforce Development Fund to provide employers with workforce development training to up-skill and re-skill their existing workforce.

Beyond this we have announced plans to work towards becoming a ‘Living Wage Nation’; directly benefiting at least 25,000 people over the next three years. We will also deliver activity to encourage benefit uptake over the course of this parliamentary term, and will be investing £3 million to introduce a financial health check guarantee for low income families with children.

We remain committed to the ideals of fair work, and will take advice from our Fair Work Convention on how to make further improvements.

The Leadership and Equality Programme aims to increase equality in the workplace and to develop leadership capacity through training and development. The funding criteria for 2018-19 is expected to be approved by the Scottish Union Learning Board in June.

In previous years, funding has supported a number of programmes focused on women workers. This includes courses to enable women to consider what it means to be a leader today and to explore how women use their skills at present, as well as how they can use them in the future to make a difference.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) does not generally publish reviews of evidence relating to decisions made by Crown Counsel not to prosecute.

Whilst COPFS will provide reasons for discontinuing cases to victims in appropriate circumstances, it is not appropriate to publish the details of a review of the evidence in a case which has been discontinued or in which no proceedings have been taken. Any such review would necessarily contain sensitive information about individuals who would be identifiable even if redaction was used to protect their names. Additionally, the publication of a review of evidence could compromise the ability of COPFS to reconsider a decision not to prosecute in a case where that is still possible, or could restrict the approach taken by COPFS in associated or similar cases.

Funding under the Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund (PECF) is for specific project work and not for core funding of the organisation. Organisations will have different ways of managing PECF staff taking maternity or paternity leave. This will be informed by a range of factors, including the anticipated impact this would have on the delivery of the project and if the organisation felt they needed to recruit someone to fill the post. Arrangements would be discussed with the organisation on a case by case basis.