Chamber and committees

The Scottish Workforce and Staff Governance Committee last met on 24 January 2024.

Meeting minutes will be published once agreed. These will be available to view at Scottish Workforce & Staff Governance (SWAG) Committee Agenda and Minutes — NHS Scotland Staff Governance

The Scottish Government has invested over £34 million since 2018 and this has supported the recruitment and retention of an additional 216.16 whole time equivalent school nurses.

This investment has meant that all Health Boards in Scotland have been able to recruit additional school nurses. Workforce numbers are published quarterly by NHS Education Scotland (NES) in the National NHS Workforce Statistics.

We continue to work with Health Boards to monitor school nursing recruitment and retention and the implementation of the transformed role.

Health and Social Care Assurance Board (HSCAB) last met on‎ 8 November 2023. At this meeting, the Co-Director of Social Care and NCS Development, provided an update on the progress of the National Care Service.

Health and Social Care Management Board (HSCMB) last met on‎ 24 January 2024, and it discussed strategic, tactical, and operational matters which contribute to the delivery of health and care service across Scotland.

The last meeting of the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce was held on the 6 December 2023 and was chaired by myself. The next meeting is scheduled for the 13 March 2024.

The NCS TOM reference group last met on the 19 May 2022. The meeting was a workshop focused on review of the current system and potential options for future systems. Consideration was given at this meeting to the potential approaches for the structure of the NCS.

Local recruitment is the responsibility of the Health Board however, the Scottish Government actively supports health boards across Scotland to plan locally for service need and for service delivery.

Following our £40 million investment from 2014-2018 to recruit an additional 500 Health Visitors, Health Visitor numbers have remained largely stable. Workforce numbers are published quarterly by NHS Education Scotland (NES) in the National NHS Workforce Statistics.

We continue to work closely with Health Boards to monitor the delivery of the Universal Health Visiting Pathway and to best ensure young families get the support they need.

While we work with Boards through planning to make best use of existing NHS resources and capacity, we will continue to use the private sector in a structured and prioritised manner. As we deliver new, better and more sustainable ways of delivering services to improve access for patients, we expect the need for private sector capacity to lessen. It is for local NHS Health Boards to determine how they use the private sector and to agree any contractual arrangements.

In 2022/23, total spend on use of the private sector in NHS Scotland represented just 0.7% (£116m) of the total frontline health budget, while in England, it was 6.5% (£11.5bn) of the Department of Health Budget.

Public Health Scotland’s Annual Acute hospital activity and NHS beds information provides information on non-NHS providers; NHS patients treated in non-NHS locations such as private hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, care homes etc. PHS's latest publication, covering 2022-23 shows that there were 2,958 consultant-led outpatient appointments performed by non-NHS providers in 2022-23, or 0.08% of the total that year (3,928,597) Table 1 – Outpatient Activity. During this period figures for new outpatient appointments are 1,988 by non-NHS providers out of 1,273,588 in total (0.16%), involving 1,943 new patients out of a total of 964,316 new patients. There were also 4,962 Continuous Inpatient Stays in non-NHS hospitals out of a total of 1,092,413 (0.45%). This involved 4,779 patients out of a total of 631,731 patients (0.76%) Table 2 – Inpatient and day case activity .

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all children in primary school receive at least two hours of physical education (PE) each school week.

To monitor progress on this commitment, local authorities have provided us with data about provision of PE in their schools since 2012. This data is reported through the annual Schools Healthy Living Survey Statistics Report, which is available through the following web link: Data and Methodology - School Healthy Living Survey: school meal uptake and PE provision statistics 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Information about schools meeting PE targets is contained on Table 18 of the supplementary statistics spreadsheet in the Schools Healthy Living Survey.

In addition to regular physical education classes there are other physical activity initiatives available for primary school age children, such as The Daily Mile. The Daily Mile is a simple and effective concept which allows all pupils to either run, jog or walk for one mile each day at any time which best suits the needs of the class. Scotland became the world’s first Daily Mile Nation in October 2022.

All 32 local authorities in Scotland currently participate in the Daily Mile Initiative.