Chamber and committees

Glasgow School of Art is an autonomous Higher Education Institution, and as such has responsibility for its own strategic and operational decision making, including those related to the restoration of the Mackintosh Building.

The Scottish Funding Council continue to engage regularly with the Glasgow School of Art at Senior Management and Board level on a range of issues including institutional governance and staff and student wellbeing.

A key milestone, however, is the outcome of the fire investigation. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service anticipate that they will be in a position to publish the fire investigation report by the end of November 2021.

Autistic children and young people are supported through local Getting it Right Pathways and processes to have needs identified early and individualised plans in place. Support should be in place before, during or after diagnosis according to need and not diagnosis. All health boards have an autism or neurodevelopmental pathway, with a local plan for ‘post diagnostic support and information’.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board has recently agreed the final version of the National Neurodevelopmental Principles and Standards of Care. The Principles and Standards of Care is for those children and young people who have neurodevelopmental profiles and support needs, including those with autism, and require more support than is currently available. The National Neurodevelopmental Principles and Standards will be published shortly.

The Additional Support for Learning Act places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, including those with autism. We provide free professional learning opportunities for practitioners, including the Autism Toolbox and Inclusive Practice online professional learning modules.

In addition, we published our Autism Action Plan in December 2020, setting out the actions we will take to improve the support to children and young people with autism in Scotland’s schools. We have made significant progress in implementing these actions and will formally report our progress in December 2021. Our work on supporting young people with Autism in mainstream schools is also supported by our guidance on the presumption of mainstream education.

The Scottish Government is able to provide details of contracts awarded by itself to third sector organisations however, without disproportionate time, cost and extensive review of many thousands of individual contractual agreements we are unable to provide data for other Public Bodies.

The data provided has been taken from Public Contracts Scotland (PCS), the Scottish Government's advertising portal. The data provided start from 2010 (when PCS was established), and are reliant on suppliers self-selecting their third sector status.

Details of contracts-frameworks awarded by the Scottish Government to third sector organisations are contained in the following table:

The information requested is publically available from PHS. This release provides information on alcohol-related inpatient and day case activity within general acute and psychiatric hospitals in Scotland. The release covers general acute hospital activity for the financial years 1981 to 1982, until 2019 to 2020 and psychiatric hospital admissions from 1997 to 1998 until 2018 to 2019. Due to limited data completeness the psychiatric hospital admissions were not updated for the financial year 2019 to 2020.

The most recent publication is available here Alcohol related hospital statistics - Scotland financial year 2019 to 2020 - Alcohol related hospital statistics - Publications - Public Health Scotland.

More detailed information on alcohol treatment will become available for future years following the full implementation of the DAISy system which went live from 1 December 2020.

While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care policy in Scotland, it is for the regional health & social care partnerships to determine the level of services that are required to meet local needs and to arrange an appropriate and suitable range of services to meet these local needs, as mandated under statute in the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act.

Local Authorities are distinct corporate bodies whose powers are set out in statute and as such are entirely separate from the Scottish Government, however it is the expectation of the Scottish Government that Local Public Bodies will operate their own autism strategies which will involve engaging with Autistic people in relation to decisions that affect them in an accessible way.

a) This is not monitored nationally.

b) This is a matter for local public bodies. The information requested is not held centrally.

The Women’s Health Pan will be published by the end of this month, August 2021, and within the first 100 days of the new session of the Parliament.

The dental sector has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Pre-COVID levels of patient volume are currently not achievable within the current framework of infection, protection and control (IPC) measures.

The Scottish Government has recently announced a 50 per cent increase in free PPE to dental practices and new funding of £5m to support improved ventilation facilities in dental surgeries. Both these measures are intending to increase the productivity of practices, enabling them to see more patients, within the current set of IPC constraints.

We can also confirm that we are working closely with UK partners as part of the review of IPC Guidance as we emerge from this pandemic. The intention is to ensure that as soon as it is safe to do so dental services can resume normal levels of activity.

The responsibility for the delivery of prisoner healthcare, including services to women living in the new community custody units in Dundee and Glasgow, rests with local NHS Boards.

The Scottish Government is working collaboratively with the SPS, NHS Tayside and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to determine what the healthcare provision will be in the community custody units. We are aiming to deliver a healthcare model that better meets the healthcare needs of women in custody and aligns with the transformative vision for the new female prison estate.

In October 2019 the Scottish Health Technology Group (SHTG) recommended that: “Where patients understand and are willing to accept the demands, risks and uncertainties of treatment, autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant (AHSCT) should be considered as a treatment option for patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) who have evidence of significant inflammatory disease activity that has not responded to adequate treatment with licensed high-efficacy disease modifying therapies (DMTs).”

Following comprehensive clinical assessment, relevant diagnostic testing and consideration by a specialist multi-disciplinary team, AHSCT can be offered to MS patients from Scotland where they meet this criteria and when it is clinically judged that the benefits of treatment outweigh the risks. In these circumstances such patients can be referred by their NHS Consultant for this specific treatment at a specialist centre in England.

Stem cell transplantation is currently undertaken in Scotland for other clinical reasons, however specific expertise in its use for the treatment of MS is still developing. In order to ensure that patients receive the highest level of safe, patient-centred care, clinical consensus is that this is currently best delivered by one of the most experienced centres globally, located in Sheffield. Although delayed by the need to focus resources on COVID-19, key stakeholders within NHS Scotland are continuing discussions regarding a potential Scottish pathway for this treatment.

AHSCT is an intensive treatment which carries a very high risk of infection for many weeks, due to severe immunosuppression as part of the treatment pathway. In March 2020 the Association of British Neurologists (ABN) recommended postponing this treatment in patients with MS until the risk of coronavirus receded, due to the potential for severe illness in those with compromised immune systems. As of November 2020, the ABN advises its use only in exceptional cases of relapsing disease.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-01751 on 6 August 2021. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .