Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government endorsed the Blackfriars Consensus Statement and its focus on continuing collaborative effort on addressing potential dementia risk and protective factors at an individual and population level.

We also recognise the complexity in identifying connections between lifestyle factors and those risk and protective factors, not least because of the increasing understanding among researchers, clinicians and others about the number of dementias and differentiation between those dementias.

While the Scottish Government has no current intention to develop a national dementia-prevention plan, it retains a concerted national focus on promoting good public health and helping to reduce the risk ill-health and illness (including dementia) in key areas such as smoking cessation, alcohol reduction, improved dietary choices and increasing exercise.

The Scottish Government is supporting the development of locally owned improvement and implementation plans through the commissioning of additional improvement support, support for a new educational framework, and guidance for developing plans that take account of local needs.

East Ayrshire, Glasgow City, Perth and Kinross, Western Isles/ Eilean Siar and Fife Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) will be supported to test and implement improvements in the approaches taken to the identification of needs and coordination of palliative and end of life care for people who need this.

The Scottish Government plans to issue the strategic commissioning guidance on palliative and end of life care this winter.

The Clinical and Care Governance Framework for integrated Health and Social Care Services in Scotland provides the ranges of professionals and staff involved in the planning and delivery of integrated health and social care services with clear governance arrangements which identifies their roles, responsibilities, actions and accountabilities. In addition one of the frameworks central principles places an emphasis on empowering people to use their experiences to shape, monitor and improve the safety and quality of their care.

The National Implementation Advisory Group met for the first time on 3 June. At this meeting they identified subject matter experts to lead on each of the commitments outlined in the Strategic Framework.

The Scottish Government plans to issue the first annual learning and improvement report into palliative and end of life care in spring 2017.

The Scottish Government is working to ensure that health economic expertise is available to Health and Social Care Partnerships to support them in developing and testing improved care processes.

The Scottish Government has asked the Chief Executive of Ardgowan Hospice to identify learning from work such as ‘Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief’, ‘Compassionate Inverclyde’ and ‘To Absent Friends’ and provide advice on how best to support the spread of this work and address any gaps.