Chamber and committees

We published our “NHS Recovery Plan 2021-2026” on Wednesday 25 August and we will update on our programme for delivery of those commitments in due course. The plan commits to ensuring that at least 10 per cent of front-line health spending is dedicated to mental health, with at least 1 per cent directed specifically to services for children and young people, by the end of the current parliamentary session. It also commits to 1,000 additional staff in primary care, meaning that every general practice will have access to a mental health and wellbeing service.

I absolutely agree with Ms Minto that local carers support organisations such as the Dochas carers centre do a fantastic job for carers, and they have responded amazingly to very difficult circumstances during the pandemic. Such services are commissioned by local authorities and integration authorities to provide advice and support to carers under the 2016 act, and the additional £28.5 million for local carers support in this year’s budget brings the total uplift from the 2016 act and the local government settlement since the legislation took effect in 2018 to £68 million per year. We also fund the national carer organisations to help carers centres share approaches and learn from each other.

In designing the national care service, we will work with carers, the people who need support and the organisations that commission and provide care to ensure that the new service delivers the improvements that we want in people’s lives.

I welcome Ms Gallacher to the Parliament.

We are undertaking a number of measures to improve child mental health services and are determined to address the significant impact that the Covid-19 period has had on the mental wellbeing of children and young people.

In October 2020, we published the mental health transition and recovery plan in response to the mental health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The plan contains a number of actions targeted at supporting children and young people and is supported by the £120 million mental health recovery and renewal fund, which was announced in February this year. Specifically, the work includes actions to improve specialist child and adolescent mental health services, address waiting times and improve other mental health supports and services for children and young people.

We recognise that not all children and young people need specialist services such as CAMHS, so we have provided £15 million additional funding to local authorities to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support for five to 24-year-olds in their communities.

We continue to invest in a range of other measures to support children and young people’s mental wellbeing, including the provision of enhanced digital resources on mental health and wellbeing available via Young Scot’s website, and expansion of the distress brief intervention programme to under-16s.

The Government accepted all the recommendations in the 2018 report of the audit of rejected referrals. We have worked to implement the recommendations by introducing a CAMHS service level specification, which sets out the levels of service that children and young people and their families can expect from CAMHS across Scotland.

We have agreed additional national health service board allocations of £29.2 million in 2021-22 in order to deliver improvements to CAMHS and to address waiting list backlogs. Obviously, Covid has had an impact on service delivery. Some boards have done better than others at continuing to see patients over the course of the pandemic period. I want to ensure that the best practice that is in place in many areas is exported to all boards in Scotland in order to ensure that we get this right for everyone in our country.

First, I welcome Jenni Minto to the Parliament, and I should also apologise to Carol Mochan for not welcoming her earlier.

We fund co-ordination of carers week in Scotland to highlight carers’ immense contribution to our society and the extra pressures that many have faced during the pandemic. Moreover, during the pandemic, we have invested an additional £1.9 million in extra carer support via carer organisations.

We are committed to ensuring that carers’ rights under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 deliver real change for carers, including through the extra £28.5 million for local carer support in this year’s budget. We will also engage with carers as we deliver on our commitment to establish a national care service that provides better support for unpaid carers.

We have invested around £358 million in the carers allowance and carers allowance supplement in 2020-21, and more than £860,000 in the young carer grant between 21 October 2019 and 31 January 2021. Young carers can also benefit from the Young Scot young carers package, which provides non-cash benefits to those aged 11 to 18.

We will shortly introduce legislation to make a further coronavirus carers allowance supplement payment in December. The payment is in addition to the increased payment to carers who qualified for carers allowance on 13 April 2020, and it means that eligible carers north of the border will continue to receive more than those south of the border. Our discussion paper, which was published in March, sets out our draft aims for Scottish carers assistance, and we are developing options to ensure that our replacement for the carers allowance delivers for unpaid carers in Scotland.

There is a lot going on, Presiding Officer.

In areas in Covid protection levels 0 to 3, day centres and residential respite services can operate in line with the relevant guidance. I know that that is not happening as quickly in some areas as it is in others. In the past week, I have written to local authorities and health and social care partnerships to try to get things moving. I assure Mr O’Kane that I will continue to do my level best to ensure that there is day respite for carers.

We are also working with carers organisations and others on our forthcoming £1.4 million holiday voucher scheme, which will benefit carers, people with disabilities and families on low incomes. I am more than happy to discuss the issue further with Mr O’Kane because, like him and many other members, I know that we need to get back to some normality and allow folk to get the breaks that many so desperately need.

As Ms Gallacher and other members in the chamber know, I am very new to this post. At this moment in time, I am looking at all aspects of our mental health delivery, with a particular focus on young people. I have already spoken to health boards on the issue, including NHS Grampian and NHS Lothian, and I will continue to engage with boards, other partners and stakeholders to ensure that we get this right for children and young people in Scotland.

I welcome you to your new role, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am sure that you will be fantastic in it.

I thank everyone for their valuable and often personal contributions, which have made this extremely important debate even better. I pay tribute to Audrey Nicoll, Emma Roddick, Carol Mochan, Elena Whitham, Paul O’Kane and Craig Hoy for their first speeches. I apologise to the old hands, but I am going to concentrate mainly on their contributions and all the aspects of my portfolio in my closing remarks.

We have ambitious plans on mental wellbeing and social care as a core. Improving quality across both offers will be a vital part of our recovery. The health and wellbeing of individuals and communities at this time is an absolute priority, as many members have mentioned. Recovery in the social care sector will be achieved only if we learn the lessons from the pandemic. We must recognise the challenging position that many employers and workers now face, and we must seek to improve the offer, the services and the outcomes to give all recipients the best opportunity to thrive in the future.

In this afternoon’s debate, many folk have talked about lived experience and their personal experiences. We should not be afraid to talk about our personal experiences in this place, nor should we be afraid to listen to folk with lived experience as we formulate the policy for the future, and I fully intend to ensure that we engage everyone we can in formulating the mental health and social care policies that we need to formulate. That is the only way in which we will improve the offer.

Over the past year, there has been significant media focus on mental wellbeing, and it is important that we recognise that, as we move forward, there will be a broad range of areas where mental health and wellbeing in itself might have an impact on our recovery if we do not get things absolutely right.

As Mr Yousaf explained, we are committed to the creation of a national care service, which will be backed by a 25 per cent increase in investment in social care over the parliamentary session. We will build a world-leading social care system that will be based on fairness, equality and human rights, and it will provide us with the consistency, equity and fairness, as well as the national approach and accountabilities, that we need to improve social care in Scotland.

In the first 100 days of our Administration, we will begin consultation on the legislation that will be required to formulate the national care service, and I want as many folk as possible to respond to that consultation. I want members of the Scottish Parliament to be evangelists to get folk to respond to the consultation so that as many people as possible have their say. The aim is to introduce a bill in Parliament in the first year of the session. That will not be easy and we will need to think radically. That work will be supported by the social covenant steering group, which will include people with lived experience of using care services. The national care service will be operational within the five-year lifetime of this Parliament, but we have a lot of work to do.

Ms Duncan-Glancy makes a very good point. She will recognise that the issue was one of the matters that were on my desk when I first took office. We are doing everything possible to make sure that those payments reach people who should have had them as soon as possible. I have already written to local authorities and health and social care partnerships on the issue, and we will do all that we can to make sure that that £500 gets in the pooches and purses of those workers as soon as possible. I am sure that Ms Duncan-Glancy will continue to ask me about that.

There are a number of other issues that have not been brought up a great deal during the debate but which I must address, because they are areas on which members of the public have contacted me and other members. One such issue is that of care home visiting. It is my priority to meet representatives from across the sector to support further progress and improve the quality of visits. I have also today written to the Care Inspectorate to ensure that care homes are following the guidance that we have put in place. We are committed to strengthening residents’ rights in adult residential settings, including working quickly to give effect to Anne’s law, whereby residents can access their nominated relatives or friends to support their wellbeing.

Delayed discharge has also featured sparingly today. I am well aware of the human cost of delayed discharge and the benefits of ensuring that we address it properly. I will work with all health and social care partners to ensure that it is addressed safely and lawfully, and I have already written to them to that effect.

Dental services have improved dramatically in the past number of years. In my area of the north-east of Scotland, folk were queuing for miles to get on to the books of an NHS dentist. That is not the case any more, because we invested in a dental school in the north-east. In our manifesto, the SNP has committed to removing dental charges to ensure equity in treating dental patients. I can provide Mr Whitfield with a greater response, but we have made a huge advance there.

Mental health is an absolute priority for the Government, and it has been throughout the pandemic. Our mental health transition and recovery plan, which contains more than 100 actions, outlines our response to the mental health effects of Covid-19. We are particularly focused on providing the right support to anyone whose mental health has been disproportionately affected during the past 15 months. That plan is supported by a £120 million recovery and renewal fund to transform services. That is the single biggest investment in mental health in the history of the Parliament.

Today’s statistics show that more folk are working in our NHS than ever before—9,000 more. We also have 80 per cent more folk working in child and adolescent mental health services than was the case when we came into power in 2007. However, there is a way to go. We have also agreed early priorities for the investment that I have talked about and we have allocated more than £34 million for the delivery of transformational improvements to CAMHS and to clear waiting list backlogs for CAMHS and psychological therapies.

We have all seen the quarterly statistics that were published this morning, and I have to say that some board areas are performing much better than others. I want to ensure the export of best practice so that we can make the improvements that we need to make in CAMHS. I have already started to engage with board chief executives at each end of the performance spectrum, and I will continue to do so across all boards. It is vital that we get this right for our young people.

I thank everyone for taking part in the debate. The pandemic is far from over and there is much to be done to support the recovery of the mental health and social care sectors. Our recovery plans must be robust, and they must keep people at their centre—the people who work in the social care and mental health sectors, and the people in the community who require their services. As we move forward, we need to continue to listen—I am a great believer in ensuring that those who have lived experience can help to formulate policy—and, as the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care, I am committed, along with my ministerial colleagues, to doing just that.