Chamber and committees

As part of our work to develop a sustainable healthcare workforce, we continue to look for opportunities to increase levels of student attraction to healthcare professions. Careers in NHS Scotland are promoted on the NHS Education Scotland NHS careers website, designed to promote opportunities to school leavers, those in education and those looking to change careers. This site can be accessed at NHSScotland Careers .

The current route to becoming a podiatrist registered with HCPC is to attain a degree in podiatry and, as such, higher education institutions (HEIs) are autonomous bodies responsible for the attraction and recruitment of their own students. Each institution has their own advertising and recruitment strategy which will include visiting schools, attending careers fairs and promoting the range of opportunities via their social media channels. HEIs also recruit to their approved programmes against their own entry requirements and will encourage and support prospective students in how to achieve the required standards.

Additionally, the Allied Health Professions (AHP) Education and Workforce Policy Review examined workforce and education issues and recommendations included promotion of allied health professional careers and aligning strategies to market a career as an allied health professional. An advisory group has been established to oversee the effective implementation of these recommendations.

Our approach to planning and delivering health and care services needs to change to enable the step-change we need in our services. Our Policy Prospectus and Programme for Government is explicitly clear that reform is required and sets out initial actions we are taking.

Work is already underway to progress reforms to ensure long term sustainability, reduction of health inequalities, deliver services closer to home, further harness the benefits of digital technology, and the improvement of population health outcomes in Scotland. We engage frequently with health boards, the public, health and social care staff and other key stakeholders across a range of issues to develop our thinking.

The Deputy First Minister announced in her statement on the budget on 19th December that the Government will be taking forward a National Conversation on the future of the NHS. The Deputy First Minister set out the principles of public ownership of our NHS and ensuring services are available free at the point of need.

The Cabinet Secretary will set out in more detail in the new year how the Government will progress this work.

This will be a collaborative process across the health and social care system, alongside stakeholder and citizen engagement as a core principle. The Scottish Government will continue to build on engagement already in place with services, clinicians, professionals, service-users and citizens in 2024 to collectively build our long-term planning for health and social care in Scotland.

The Princes Trust and NHS Scotland Partnership’s programmes aim to support young people to achieve the outcome that is right for them. Often this is not directly into NHS employment as many of the young people require longer term support to achieve this outcome. Positive destinations include employment, further education, training or volunteering.

The Get Started programme is a personal and social development opportunity which is targeted at those young people who are furthest away from entering the labour market. In 2022-23, of the 56 young people supported, 37 participants moved on to a positive destination.

The Get Into programme is a short course that further develops young people’s skills and familiarises them with employment in the NHS. In 22-23, 44 young people were supported by the Get Into Programme with 29 moving on to a positive destination, of whom 13 gained employment with the NHS.

The Scottish Government does not hold data on the retention of Princes Trust participants in NHS employment.

As this commitment relates to activity currently underway and due to be completed by the end of this financial year, this data will therefore not be available until after the end of the 2023-24 accounting period. Activity will include participants in NHS Get Started and Get Into programmes as well as Achieve educational events.

The Scottish Government has had a wide range of discussions with Police Scotland over many years about its use of technology to support effective policing in communities through its Change Programmes.

In 2019-20 the Scottish Government provided an additional £12 million in capital funding to support the introduction of mobile devices for 10,000 officers, as part of an investment programme to build operational capacity enhance digital capabilities and enable frontline officers to spend more time in communities.

Police Scotland is the lead delivery partner for the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) Programme – a collaborative transformation programme supported and funded by the Scottish Government and currently being piloted in Dundee. It will deliver significant efficiencies to Police Scotland and its partners, making the process of collecting, editing and sharing evidence with the prosecutor much simpler and quicker for officers than current processes. DESC is also a critical platform for future transformation, such as the national roll out of a body worn video capability, and greater use of pre-recorded evidence.

The Scottish Police Authority provide oversight and scrutiny when new technologies are being introduced to ensure that ethical, legal and human rights are considered, so that public confidence can be maintained.

Apprenticeships are a key way for employers to invest in their workforce, providing skills the economy needs now and in the future. Scottish Government recognise the importance of apprenticeships for the public sector, including health & social care. Our priority is to ensure apprenticeships are of high quality and lead to sustainable employment opportunities characterised by Fair Work.

To assess national demand for apprenticeships, a wide-ranging consultation process is carried out by Skills Development Scotland which includes employers, trade unions and trade bodies. This ensures that apprenticeships are developed and delivered in line with employer needs, including the public sector.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with Higher Education Institutions and other partners including Health Boards, Skills Development Scotland, and the Scottish Funding Council on skills development, employability and widening access to NHS Scotland careers, including the development of apprenticeship models to provide an ‘earn and learn’ pathway.

The Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to the founding principles of the NHS. As is the case across the UK, hospitals in the independent sector were contracted to provide additional capacity for NHS priority patients throughout the pandemic. NHS Scotland makes limited use of the independent sector, in contrast to the position in NHS England.

Our National Treatment Centres (NTCs) Programme is the single biggest increase in planned care capacity ever created in NHS Scotland; these centres are planning to deliver over 20,000 additional planned care procedures by 2024-25.

NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is also playing a central role in working with Health Boards to ensure that they are able to continually identify new ways to increase capacity, and to respond to demand through service innovation and redesign.

CfSD’s clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG) have supported several new and innovative pathway developments, many of which are now being successfully scaled up across Scotland, including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT), Patient Initiated Review (PIR) and Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS). These improvement programmes will support delivery of the targets and provide sustainable solutions for the future.

Scottish Government has contracted AssistFM to map existing breakfast provision. This mapping is expected to be completed in Spring 2024. There are no plans to publish it separately, as this work is just one of the elements which will inform policy on school breakfasts, and a plan for breakfast provision, designed around the needs of children and families.