I am the head of the unit within the CMO directorate of the Scottish Government that has responsibility for the CMO’s rape and sexual assault task force and for the Forensic Medical Services (Victims of Sexual Offences) Scotland Bill.
I will not cover the bill itself, but Greig Walker will be happy to answer any questions about the bill process and about what the bill’s provisions do. I will provide a brief overview of the strategic context for the work and will then briefly highlight some of the task force’s key achievements to date.
I understand that you met survivors last week. The CMO and I have also met survivors and have heard similar, if not identical, accounts. Their experiences were distressing and, frankly, unacceptable. Indeed, it was feedback about the quality and consistency of the services that they received that prompted Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland to undertake a strategic review.
The inspectorate’s report, which was published in March 2017, highlighted significant gaps and disparities across Scotland and made 10 recommendations to improve those. In April 2017, the CMO was asked by the then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport and the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice to chair a task force to provide national leadership for improvement of those services. The task force vision is for consistent person-centred and trauma-informed services across Scotland. Our ambition is to ensure that the shortcomings of the past are not repeated. The chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland makes an important contribution to that work and helps to ensure that the voice of lived experience is always front and centre of everything that we do.
In order to deliver against the HMICS recommendations under the remit of the task force, the CMO published in October 2017 a five-year high-level work plan. That set out actions to be taken across a range of issues between now and the end of 2022. The Scottish Government has committed £8.5 million to support that ambitious programme of work.
In December 2018, HMICS published a progress review that recognised the joint strategic leadership across health and justice but highlighted that challenges remained. At the time of that review, the CMO commented that the work of the task force was at a tipping point. Considerable progress has been made since then.
We know that having access to a female doctor is important for anyone who requires a forensic medical examination following a rape or sexual assault. Improving that was an early priority for the task force. Funding has been provided to NHS Education Scotland since 2017 to provide specific training for doctors, with the aim of increasing the number of women available to undertake the work. The training has also been adapted to allow participation by nurses who are involved in providing trauma-informed care for victims of rape and sexual assault.
So far, 118 doctors, 70 per cent of whom are female, and 68 nurses, 97 per cent of whom are female, have been trained. A further 10 doctors and 21 nurses were due to attend the NES training today, but NES decided late last week to postpone that due to the Covid-19 situation. That training will be rearranged as soon as it is practical to do so.
Baseline workforce data indicates that, now, 61 per cent of sexual offence examiners in Scotland are female. That is an increase of around 30 per cent on the indicative figure in the HMICS report, but we are not complacent. The availability of a female sexual offence examiner is the first quality indicator underpinning the Healthcare Improvement Scotland standards and the work to continuously improve that remains a top priority for the task force and for health boards.
Task force funding has also been provided to recruit more forensically trained nurses to be present throughout an examination and to help to ensure that an individual receives appropriate follow-up healthcare and support. In addition, the task force is supporting a new initiative to develop the role of nurse sexual offence examiner in Scotland. That was a key recommendation in the HMICS report.
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Funding is being provided to train a cohort of community pharmacists to look for indicators of rape or sexual assault and to provide a trauma-informed response to any disclosure. We have also begun work with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to pilot sexual offence examiners giving evidence remotely in rape and sexual assault cases.
Another key HMICS recommendation was that dedicated healthcare facilities should be established across Scotland. Task force funding is being invested in each of the 14 territorial health boards to develop their sexual assault response co-ordination service, in line with a national service specification. Funding is also being provided to develop regional centres of expertise to support those locally delivered services.
All examinations that were previously carried out in a police station are now carried out in an appropriate healthcare setting, and funding has been provided to ensure that all health boards that require a colposcope are able to purchase one. In addition, the fact that a national decontamination protocol has been published and is being implemented by health boards addresses another HMICS recommendation.
A package of resources has been developed to ensure a consistent national approach to the recording, collation and reporting of data in relation to these services. That package includes the final Healthcare Improvement Scotland quality indicators that underpin the standards that were published in 2017, as well as a new national form to consistently capture information that is obtained during a healthcare assessment and forensic medical examination. That form has been agreed by all key partners to ensure that it meets the respective needs of the healthcare and criminal justice systems. The package also includes national data sets to monitor health boards’ performance against the quality indicators as they progress through their improvement journey; the first national clinical pathway for adults who present following rape or sexual assault; and a summary clinical pathway for wider healthcare professionals who might be the first to respond to a disclosure of rape or sexual assault.
You will appreciate that we want to ensure that all health boards are appropriately supported to understand how those resources knit together and what their role is in ensuring a successful nationwide roll-out. As such, my team held roadshows in NHS Shetland and NHS Orkney just last week, and four more were scheduled for the remaining health boards over the course of this week and next to explain what the change in practice means for them.
However, in light of the current Covid-19 situation, we are mindful of the unprecedented pressure on the national health service to prioritise its response to the pandemic, so we are considering when it would be appropriate to ask chief executives to implement the new measures. The cabinet secretary will write to the convener about that as soon as the position has been clarified. In the meantime, we can provide copies of all relevant documents, if that would be helpful.
As we announced in the policy memorandum for the bill, a new sub-group of the task force has been established to develop detailed protocols for health boards on the provisions of the bill as they relate to self-referral. The sub-group’s work is already well under way.
The task force is now halfway through its five-year plan. Although we still have much more to do, the impact that we are having is tangible, and the bill will be an important anchor that will underpin everything that we plan to achieve.
We would be happy to answer any questions that members might have.