Chamber and committees

I have a brief supplementary. Public Health Scotland’s website has loads of virtual learning opportunities for clinicians and for anybody in healthcare and social care. It has modules on health inequalities and human rights, health and wellbeing, tackling poverty, mental health, health at work and the public health workforce. There are loads of learning opportunities that people can log into and look at—they are out there and available now.

Will Audit Scotland look at the uptake of those virtual learning experiences, who is involved in taking them up and whether the Government should be doing more to support Public Health Scotland’s work to ensure that the opportunities in that learning environment are taken up by health boards, local authorities and IJBs?

We have talked about prevention. The Government has provided financial support for deep-end practices—for example, in Govan in Glasgow—to monitor engagement. Part of that financial support was for link workers, anti-poverty work and giving people welfare advice. We have that data now to show engagement work and support by deep-end practices. We can look at that data and see the value of investing in that project. Is that something that we can audit right now?

I mentioned rural areas earlier, and we are talking about digital inclusion and exclusion. We have found that people in rural areas have used digital access to have telephone or video calls for mental health consultations. Will we continue to measure that to see how digital access benefits people, with those in rural areas being able to see somebody? People should still be able to see someone face to face, because that might be the best way forward for some people, but it could be quite positive for people in our rural areas if they could continue to use NHS Near Me, for example.

That is good to hear.

I was also thinking about how we direct people. For instance, we have had some feedback that people go and see their GP and expect to be given tablets for their type 2 diabetes, for instance, when maybe a social prescribing programme could help reverse that condition. We saw that in the television programme “Fixing Dad”, in which Geoff Whitington, who weighed 20 stones, managed with support from his family to lose a lot of weight. What else can we do to show people that alternative pathways are adjuncts and are not necessarily class B rather than class A things? We have seen, especially during the Covid pandemic, how important it is to support people’s mental health by, say, getting them outside and walking.

I am also thinking about recruitment of GPs. The Scottish graduate entry medicine programme is unique to Scotland and was created as a collaboration between the universities of St Andrews and Dundee to support training of GPs. I assume that that is going well. This might need a longer answer than we have time for today, but I would like a wee update on how ScotGEM is going.

I am interested in social prescribing, too. The question is how we signpost folk to some of the services that exist. In this inquiry, we have focused on helping people signpost patients to additional third sector services using a local information service for Scotland—ALISS—which is the Government-funded local information system. At our previous meeting, we also heard about the resource that the Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations Council provides and the DG locator service in Dumfries and Galloway.

I am interested in hearing how we can enhance and give better support to ALISS and in considering how we direct people to mental health services. We have seen the benefits of men’s sheds, walking football, walking groups and other social groups that the third sector can help to direct people to. How do we support ALISS in signposting people?

I have a quick supplementary question. I understand that community link workers will be required to carry out different duties, depending on where they are working in a local authority or health board area. According to a freedom of information request that has been published on the Government’s website, there were 218 link workers in post at the end of March 2021.

I know that there has been a pandemic for two years, and that is why some of the data might not be as up to date as we would like, but there is a projected total of 323 link workers by March 2022. I am interested to hear the cabinet secretary’s thoughts on that. I reinforce the point that link workers might be doing different things across different health boards, and we should support the health boards to know their own area and to support their GP practices, whether they be rural or urban.

Thank you.

I am interested in how the regulations will be communicated to the local authorities and health boards. As a nurse, I know about the exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that lead to hospital admissions. A respiratory care action plan is now being developed and will then be delivered. Tomorrow, I am heading to Belfast to talk at a Border and Regions Airways Training Hub—BREATH—project event, which is about COPD causes, prevention and treatment. It is welcome that we have these regulations. How will they be communicated to our local authorities and health boards?

The programme has a particular focus on rural general practice.