Chamber and committees

I provided figures in my previous response to S6W-12191 on the number of delayed discharges from hospital under the requirements of the Adults with Incapacity Act, which related to the guardianship process. All patients whose discharge from hospital is delayed by the application process for a guardianship are recorded under Code 9.

The Scottish Government is progressing a range of actions with partners to expedite AWI discharges from hospital to ensure that, once medically fit, patients can be cared for in a setting that is most appropriate for their needs. This includes:

• reviewing the guardianship process to identify opportunities to reduce timescales for the processing of applications;
• working with partners at a national level to disseminate good practice to local areas;
• providing targeted advice and assistance to Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), working with them to identify improvements to the process.

n September 2021, the Scottish Government published the National Neurodevelopmental Specification for Children and Young People which sets out seven standards for service providers to ensure that children and young people, who have neurodevelopmental profiles with support needs, receive the support that they require. The Neurodevelopmental Specification is purposefully inclusive and includes support for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as such there is no separate guidance for ASD and ADHD.

A neurodevelopmental diagnosis is not required in order for a child or young person to receive support that meets their needs. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community or school based, and should be quickly and easily accessible.

To support implementation of the Neurodevelopmental Specification, we have provided funding to NHS Boards to build capacity to provide access to specialist neurodevelopmental professionals.

In March 2022, funding was also provided to allow five local areas to take forward Tests of Change on the implementation of the Neurodevelopmental Service Specification, specifically to test and implement aspects of the Standards and Principles of Care outlined in the Specification. Learning and evidence will be shared from these Tests once concluded to support other local partners to implement the Specification successfully.

The standards outlined within the National Neurodevelopmental Specification will continue to be reviewed on a regular basis in light of any new research and recommendations made to Scottish Government, particularly in relation to learning emerging from the Neurodevelopmental Tests of Change.

This data is not centrally available; aggregated data for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Waiting Times is sent to PHS from each NHS Board. It does not contain any information specifically on the number of young people removed from waiting lists, it reports on the number of referrals for young people to services, numbers waiting to start treatment and total waiting, and then numbers for those who started treatment and those who’s referral was rejected / not accepted (with both outcomes resulting in them being removed from the waiting list).

Table 1 shows the number of young people that started treatment – i.e. resulting in them being removed from waiting lists - and Table 2 shows the number that were not accepted for treatment therefore removed from waiting lists. The figures are presented by NHS Board of Treatment and relate to the financial years 2014-15 to 2021-22.

Data from 2012 has been published on the Information Services Division website, but data prior to 2014 is from a period when the aggregate dataset in development and is not regarded as reliable compared to more recently collected data. All data presented in Tables 1 and 2 has been previously published, however the data presented has been newly extracted and analysed to take account of subsequent data resubmissions to provide the most accurate figures. Therefore figures below may differ slightly to previously published figures for some years.

Table 1: People who started treatment in CAMHS from April 2014 to September 2022, by NHS Board of Treatment.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

The Mental Welfare Commission (MWC) for Scotland has safeguarding duties in relation to people who are subject to the protection of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000. This duty includes monitoring the use of welfare guardianship orders to determine how and for whom the AWI Act is being used. Hearings take place within 28 days of the application being submitted to the court. The Commission is notified of the date of an Adults with Incapacity hearing in court and also the date the order is granted. The most recent AWI monitoring report (covering 2021-22) was published by the MWC in October 2022. A link to the report can be found on the MWC website.

The Local Government distribution formula is kept under constant review and is agreed with COSLA each year.

Any requests for changes to the agreed distribution formula must, in the first instance, come through COSLA.

The Scottish Fuel Poverty Advisory Panel (“the Panel”) is an independent advisory Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB). The Panel’s secretariat can be contacted by emailing [email protected] for the requested information, as this information is not held by the Scottish Government. However, my officials were invited for a part of the most recent meeting of the Panel on 28 November for a discussion on the Fuel Poverty and Heat in Buildings Strategies.

Our approach to supporting people who have a terminal illness is demonstrated in the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, which introduced a new definition of terminal illness. Rather than imposing an arbitrary life expectancy, the clinical judgement of the person’s doctor or nurse is relied upon. This allows people who have been diagnosed as having a terminal illness to receive fast-tracked access to Child Disability Payment or Adult Disability Payment

It is already the case that people who receive a disability benefit in relation to their terminal illness may be eligible to receive a Winter Heating Payment, where they otherwise meet the criteria for eligibility for the Payment. Any further developments to Winter Heating Payment including amendments to eligibility criteria will be considered once the new benefit is being delivered and its initial evaluation is complete.

The Scottish Government has not recovered and has no plans to recover any COVID-19 related funding from councils. Individual councils continue to have complete autonomy to allocate their reserves based on local needs and priorities.

The Scottish Ministers provided £145 million in Covid support grants to local government between 2019-20 and 2021-22 (TBC).

This included £95m for Hospitality and Leisure, £9.5 million for Public House Table Service, £4.7 million for Nightclub Closure, £1.2 million for Scottish Brewers, £29.4 million for Taxi and Private Hire and £5.5 million for Business Ventilation.

Local authorities have confirmed that £32 million has not been spent. Consideration of amounts to be recovered from local authorities is ongoing and therefore I cannot provide figures at this time. However, I would be happy to provide those figures once they are available.

The information requested is not held centrally. Information on the number of pupils with additional support needs, planning approaches and types of need are collected and published within national statistics. This is available from Schools in Scotland 2022: summary statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)