Chamber and committees

I am interested in what we have learned from other countries. My understanding is that 45 other countries have taken forward a DRS.

I welcome the debate and, indeed, the Scottish Government’s upcoming dementia strategy.

My first job after I left school was in a care home, and my first placement as a student nurse was in the care of the elderly module. My experience helps me understand that there has been lots of knowledge development and changes to care delivery over recent decades for people living with dementia.

The commitment from the minister that the Scottish Government will work with people with lived experience of dementia to deliver the strategy, which keeps Scotland at the forefront of dementia policy, is also welcome.

Improving care and support for people living with dementia and those who care for them has been a major ambition of the SNP Government since 2007. Since then, dementia services have been transformed, with excellent contributions from staff working across health and social care and the wider public, third and independent sectors.

Just a fortnight ago in Stranraer, I spoke with a dementia nurse specialist who shared the view that, although progress has been made, we can go much further. I was also interested to hear from her that young-onset dementia is increasing in Scotland, and I ask the minister to say in closing whether the Scottish Government is addressing that.

The Scottish Government’s previous dementia strategy recognised the importance of taking a person-centred and flexible approach to providing support at all stages of the dementia journey, from work on diagnosis through all stages of the illness and in all care settings. Those principles are important.

The Scottish Government wants everyone with dementia to live with good quality of life for longer, at home or in a homely setting or in another place of their choosing, where they are connected to friends, family and community. I therefore ask that the next national dementia strategy should look at self-directed support and, in particular, at what stage a person has to be in their dementia journey to receive self-directed support. At the moment, various social work departments apply SDS in different ways, and I have had several local cases in which SDS decisions were reversed. SDS can be a crucial tool. Therefore, I ask the minister for a commitment that SDS will be looked at as part of the strategy and that its use nationally can be evened out and maybe become a wee bit fairer.

The Scottish Government wants more people living with dementia to be able to live well at home for as long as possible. Last year, a major forum on housing and dementia published a series of recommendations on living well with the condition. Housing has a huge role to play in supporting people who are living with dementia to feel safe and able to play an active role in their local communities as their needs change.

Loreburn Housing Association in Dumfries and Galloway has built dementia-friendly housing alongside an innovative employment hub on the site of the former Garrick hospital in Stranraer. Young people living at the youth foyer are expected to be in education, an apprenticeship, employment or training, and they have access to volunteering opportunities in the community. The youth foyer also offers community access areas, a state-of-the-art conference facility, breakout spaces and access to wifi. The aims of the site are fantastic and, as the Scottish Government takes forward the new strategy, I encourage it to look at that model. I invite the minister to visit Stranraer—I would be happy to join him.

I know that this afternoon’s debate is short. My focus has been on self-directed support, but I know that we could have had a longer debate about dementia care. I will close there.

I have been doing some work around derelict buildings, and I am listening to the debate because the matter is important to me. Does Carol Mochan agree that

“local authorities have several discretionary statutory powers available to tackle derelict ... buildings”,

which the report outlines? Amenity notices, defective building notices and dangerous buildings notices—those are powers that local authorities have.

Good morning, everybody. I have a quick question about the remit of the patient safety commissioner. Sometimes the impact of care or—I should say—unsafe care is not directly or overtly evident. I note that Dr Williams suggested that the commissioner’s remit should include advocating for patients. I am thinking of groups or populations in which harm has occurred as a result of, say, a lack of compassion or some other issue that is not directly related to safety. Would you expect the patient safety commissioner’s remit to be wide enough to cover the patient population to whom overt harm might not have been caused?

It is for Dr Williams.

I did not think that I would be talking about roads in Dumfries and Galloway—the A75 and the A77—at a meeting of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, but the issue is relevant to the many challenges with recruitment and retention.

We must remember that we have the Scottish graduate entry medicine programme. It would be really good to hear how that is working. What is the retention level? Where is that programme doing well? That is part of it. There are also programmes for trained general nurses to become midwives and vice versa, although that is not happening in my part of the South Scotland region because Dumfries and Galloway was not selected for the dual training approach.

Work is being taken forward, but it will not be an overnight fix. I support doing whatever we need to do to look at rural health and social care.

I welcome the witnesses to the Scottish Parliament—it is good to have you here. I am interested in how your remit and role compare with the proposed remit of the patient safety commissioner for Scotland, which seems to be a bit wider. Do you have an opinion on whether there would be any benefits or drawbacks of the remit being a bit different in Scotland? Has your remit given you enough to work on, without considering wider issues?

What Matthew McClelland said is pretty clear. I do not like the idea of a patient safety commissioner who would create an adversarial and defensive environment. I agree that a patient safety commissioner should promote patient safety.

Are there any additional powers that might need to be included in the bill, for example around naming a health board, company or business? Is anything like that missing from the bill?

Okay, thank you.

People have also intimated that the patient safety commissioner’s role should be about healthcare, not health and social care. However, if we move towards having a national care service, which would encompass the whole of a patient’s care journey, would you expect the remit to be wider and to include social care down the line?