Chamber and committees

Through our partner agencies - Creative Scotland, Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland and the enterprise agencies - we have supported a range of actions through grant funding, including developing leadership and business skills through the Skills Investment Plan; innovation support from Scottish Funding Council and a broad range of activity delivered through the Creative Scotland Creative Industries Strategy. The latter has included workshops on investment, business training programmes for emerging creative graduates, supporting the development of affordable studio provision, and encouraging innovation within creative business activity. In recent years, we have seen employment in the sector grow to 73,600 which is a 2.5% increase on 2014 and a 15% increase since 2011.

The Scottish Government's vision is for a circular economy in which materials are kept in high value use for as long as possible, though reuse and recycling.

While biodegradable packaging can help to reduce litter through the gradual degradation of littered items, the Scottish Government’s focus is on reducing the amount of packaging used where practical, and ensuring that any material that does arise is recycled and contains as much recycled content as possible. Mechanisms such as the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 make stipulations about the separate presentation and collection of recyclables, influencing the producer responsibility system for packaging to keep recycling targets as high as possible. The Scottish Government also supports the Courtauld Commitment with grocery retailers, industry and the hospitality sector to reduce the environmental impact of their activity.

The Scottish Government also has a range of work to tackle the issue of littering. This focuses on preventing littering in the first place, through actions such as increasing the penalties for litter and flytipping; introducing the single use carrier bag charge; and the introduction of a National Litter Strategy (http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0045/00452542.pdf).

Engagement with stakeholders about the strategy’s scope and purpose is currently underway and will inform our approach to broader public engagement over the coming months. Our stated approach to the development of a culture strategy for Scotland is both a collaborative and an iterative one which will draw on the knowledge, expertise and energy of the culture sector/s so that the strategy is shaped by those who best understand the many ways culture contributes to society and one which responds to feedback received throughout the process. Although led by the Scottish Government, the strategy is to be developed by and for all of Scotland and it would not be helpful, therefore, to impose a fixed deadline for publication at this early stage.

The ONS measures of persistent poverty look at whether people are at risk of poverty over a number of years. The most recent data shows that 14.6% of people in the UK had been at risk of poverty in only one of the years between 2012 and 2015, a further 7% had been at risk for 2 years; 4% for 3 years and, 4% had been at risk of poverty in all four years between 2012 and 2015.

These levels of poverty are completely unacceptable and are set to rise higher. The Institute of Fiscal Studies’ most recent report estimates that an additional 1.2 million children will be in relative poverty in the UK in the year 2021-22 when compared to 2014-15.

Our Fairer Scotland Action Plan sets out 50 concrete actions that we will take in this Parliamentary term. These include a £29 million programme for communities and the third sector to tackle poverty; the introduction of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill, setting out ambitious 2030 targets; the establishment of a Poverty and Inequality Commission to provide independent advice and scrutiny; and the forthcoming consultation on a socio-economic duty, which will ensure that public bodies take full consideration of socio-economic disadvantage when making key decisions. We are already making progress on many of these actions and a full update will be published in October this year.

These and many other positive measures are happening against a backdrop of challenging welfare cuts and austerity measures from the UK government. Scottish Government has already invested over £350 million since 2013-14 to protect those on the lowest incomes from the worst of these cuts - resources that would be better invested in direct measures to reduce poverty.

To ensure that NHSScotland and the Social Care sector have the right skills mix, we will introduce national and regional workforce planning.

Workforce planning already happens locally within NHSScotland Boards, but we want to develop a National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan that looks to:-

strengthen and harmonise workforce planning practice, nationally, regionally and locally;

take full account of the future demand for safe and high quality services for Scotland’s people;

accurately identify gaps in supply;

help deliver the vision set out in the Delivery Plan published in December 2016.

The Plan will be published in three distinct parts:-

Part 1 will focus on NHSScotland workforce planning and is being published today, on Wednesday 28 June 2017.

Part 2 will be published jointly with COSLA in Autumn 2017. This timeframe reflects the process currently underway to establish new leadership within COSLA in light of the local election results in May 2017. The approach will enable different workforce planning systems to take stock, and move forward incrementally towards improved integrated planning across the full social care landscape.

We will also publish a supplement following the conclusion of the General Medical Services contract negotiations in late 2017, of which workforce planning is a key part. Investment in an enhanced multi-disciplinary workforce will be integral to supporting a new GP contract and this will help to address workforce challenges for GPs in the Primary Care sector.

This approach will enable the different healthcare systems to move together towards publication of a second full Health and Social Care Workforce Plan in 2018 and beyond.

Staff side organisations have been formally invited to join the National Workforce Planning Group and we will continue to work in partnership around the delivery of the Plan. The Group will strengthen and improve consistency in workforce planning practice and will help to support implementation of the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan by health and social care providers across Scotland.

The Scottish Government has maintained a priority focus on dementia since 2007. We have had two national strategies so far, and I am pleased to confirm that we are today publishing the third Scottish Dementia Strategy, for 2017-2020. The strategy can be accessed at the following link: www.gov.scot/dementiastrategy

During the last three years we have focused on making sure that people with dementia get the care, treatment and support they are entitled to in all care settings, at all ages and at all stages of their illness. There has been significant progress in many aspects of dementia care in that time, including improved diagnosis rates, the introduction of the human-rights based Standards of Care for Dementia in Scotland and a national dementia workforce training and education framework, Promoting Excellence.

During the next phase of our national work and the third dementia strategy we will build on the progress which has already been made in transforming services and outcomes for people with dementia and their carers.

We will continue our focus on diagnosis and post-diagnostic support. The optimum model of post-diagnostic support is one where the person with dementia is diagnosed early enough that they can take as active a part as possible, and have as much control and choice as they want in the process. To make that happen, we want to make more progress in getting more people diagnosed earlier.

For that reason, we are testing the re-location of post-diagnostic services into modern primary care settings, with the aim that this will make post-diagnostic dementia services more accessible, thereby encouraging more people to come forward earlier for a dementia diagnosis or for a memory assessment, in a setting where the appropriate post-diagnostic support services are on hand to respond to the individual’s needs.

Our national priorities on dementia are informed by continuing to listen to people with dementia, their family carers and the professionals working with them. Their stories have helped us to clearly identify our key priorities on post-diagnostic support, care coordination, care and support in all settings, and how to make Scotland a more Dementia friendly country.

We legislated to integrate health and social care in 2014. Integrated home care is essential in order to enable people with more advanced symptoms of dementia to live, not only safely, but with a good quality of life in their own home for as long as possible – and with families and carers who feel supported in their key caring role. Our approach to integration is focused on person-centred planning and delivery - bringing together services and professionals to ensure that an integrated, holistic, person-centred experience will improve the whole system, the whole pathway of care, and the wellbeing of the whole person.

Improving the care of people with dementia in acute general hospitals and in specialist NHS dementia settings also remains a key part of national dementia policy.

We also have a significantly enhanced focus on palliative and end of life care for people with dementia, with the overall aim that by 2021 everyone with dementia has access to high-quality palliative and end of life care, based on the principles of early planning and services working holistically with people with dementia and their loved ones, to reflect their wishes in the care provided.

More than 500 people took part in a series of National Dementia Dialogue Engagement Events between 2015 and 2016, to help inform the development of this new strategy. We have worked with experts from a range of organisations including Alzheimer Scotland, CoSLA, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, the Alliance, Scottish Care, the Scottish Social Services Council, NHS Education for Scotland, the Care Inspectorate, Integrated Joint Boards, academics and people with dementia and their carers to develop the new dementia strategy to ensure that people get the right care, in the right place, at the right time. I would like to thank them for their considered and constructive contribution to the development of this third dementia strategy.

Following the publication of the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan, and the Mental Health Strategy 2017-27, the Scottish Government will be working with Integration Authorities, NHS boards, training providers and other partners to deliver the commitment to increasing investment in the mental health workforce in key settings.

The work will take account of the mix of different staff that will be needed, different models of delivery, and implications for training and workforce development.