Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government continues to support women to breastfeed as the normal nutrition for babies.

It is for each NHS Board to plan services to meet the needs of its population. Most health boards have infant feeding advisors and/or peer support coordinators who will provide support to mothers, regardless of the choices the mothers make in how they feed their infants.

The Scottish Government engages with all boards, including NHS Lothian, to discuss their general provision of support, by appropriately trained staff, that meets their population need.

We have been working with the National Scottish Steering Group for Educational Psychologists (NSSGEP) on workforce planning to ensure a sustainable supply of educational psychologists to meet needs. On 25 May 2018 an agreement was reached between COSLA and the Scottish Government on a new partnership funding package to help with fees and living costs for trainee educational psychologists. This will deliver up to 30 new educational psychologists each year.

It is for individual local authorities to take decisions on the numbers of educational psychologists they need and employ. There are a number of reasons why educational authorities have unfilled positions, which can include when a recruitment process is on-going but not complete, where a recruitment process does not generate a suitable candidate, where the incumbent is on maternity leave, and where a local authority has not given approval to fill a vacancy.

The following table, taken from the school staff census, shows the number of educational psychologists (full time equivalent) employed by education authorities, broken down by local authority and year since 2010.

This specific information is not held centrally. In terms of health and social care more generally, the Scottish Government is working to develop a medium term financial framework, within the context of the budget settlement that the Scottish Government receives. This will be to outline the broad direction for the NHS and care services to meet the changing needs of the people of Scotland, including taking account of such demographic factors and shifting the balance of care towards community health services.

At a local level, Integration Authorities are responsible for strategic planning of adult social care services. The Scottish Government is providing analytical support in local partnerships to support analysis of demand for social care support.

Since April, Integration Authorities have new responsibilities under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 for local carer strategies setting out carer support available locally, including short breaks, and an assessment of demand. They are also responsible for publishing short breaks services statements providing information about short breaks available for both carers and those they care for.

The purpose of the Short Breaks Fund is to increase the range, availability and choice of short breaks for carers and the people they care for, through the development and delivery of short breaks projects and services by third sector organisations.

The Scottish Government has funded Shared Care Scotland and Family Fund to manage the Short Breaks Fund. Shared Care Scotland manage three distinct schemes: Creative Breaks; Better Breaks and Time To Live. Family Fund manage a scheme called Take a Break.

Shared Care Scotland is allocated £2.3m annually by the Scottish Government to operates three distinct programmes: Better Breaks; Creative Breaks and Time to Live. More information can be found here: https://www.sharedcarescotland.org.uk/shortbreaksfund/ and also at http://shortbreakstories.org.uk/ .

The Better Breaks programme provides 12 month grants to third sector organisations to develop and deliver short breaks projects and services for children and young people with disabilities (aged 20 and under), and their carers (adult carers and/or young carers).

More information can be found here: https://www.sharedcarescotland.org.uk/shortbreaksfund/betterbreaks/ .

Creative Breaks provides 12 month grants to third sector organisations to develop and deliver short breaks projects and services for carers of adults(aged 21 years and over), carers of older people (aged 65 years and over), young carers (caring for children or adults), and those that they care for. This programme opens for applications in April each year.

More information can be found here: https://www.sharedcarescotland.org.uk/creativebreaks/ .

A snapshot of the impact ‘Creative Breaks’ had during 2016–2017 can be found here https://www.sharedcarescotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/04848-Creative-Breaks-overview.pdf .

The Time to Live programme provides grant funding to carers organisations (usually carers centres) to develop and deliver micro grants schemes for carers of adults (aged 21 years and over), carers of older people (aged 65 years and older) and young carers. TTL enables carers to access funds and support to help them take short breaks that meet their needs. This programme is not open to unsolicited applications. More information can be found here: https://www.sharedcarescotland.org.uk/shortbreaksfund/timetolive/ .

Family Fund’s ‘Take a Break’ programme is allocated £700K annually by the Scottish Government. It is Scotland’s short break fund for disabled children and their families. It aims to provide families with the choice and opportunity to access a single or ongoing break from caring. Take a Break grants enable families caring for a disabled or seriously ill child or young person to have the opportunity to choose how they would like to take a break, with a view to improving the quality of life, health and wellbeing of the whole family. More information can be found here: https://www.familyfund.org.uk/take-a-break .

Numbers of Consultants working in Surgical Specialities have increased by 41.7% during the lifetime of this government.

Information on consultant vacancy figures, of which consultants working in surgical specialities is a sub category, is published by ISD Scotland and is available at the following web links:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2018-03-06/Consultant_Vacancies_D2017.xls .

and

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2012-11-27/Consultant_Vacancies_S2012.xls?40942485 .

Information on how many NHS surgeon positions remained unfilled in each year since 1999, broken down by NHS Board, is not centrally held. Specific local information may be available from individual NHSScotland Boards.

The following table shows the numbers of deaths from (a) external causes which cause hypoxia and (b) fetal hypoxia. It is not practical to provide figures for deaths from all the other diseases in which hypoxia may play a part.

Deaths for which the underlying cause was either (a) an external cause of hypoxia or (b) fetal hypoxia, registered in Scotland from 1999 to 2016.

The Scottish Government supports development of trauma-informed services and work is underway to raise awareness of the impact of trauma and adverse childhood experiences amongst various sectors.

Education Scotland has developed a range of professional learning resources and support materials to support implementation of nurturing approaches across Scottish schools. These include the document “ Applying Nurture as a Whole School Approach ”, a framework for self-evaluation of a Nurturing approach in schools and Early Learning and Childcare settings. https://education.gov.scot/improvement/documents/inc55applyingnurturingapproaches120617.pdf . All materials complement development of trauma-informed schools, offering guidance on meeting the needs of all children and young people but particularly those who have experienced early adversity and trauma.

Education Scotland are developing additional professional learning materials which give further guidance and support for children who have experienced early adversity and trauma, and curricular materials to help children and young people develop an understanding of early adversity and trauma. It is hoped that these will be available in the academic session 2018-19.

In June 2017, a report was published by the multi-disciplinary Scottish Adverse Childhood Experiences Hub, hosted by NHS Health Scotland, to inform thinking about the impact of adverse childhood experiences within education. http://www.healthscotland.scot/media/1517/tackling-the-attainment-gap-by-preventing-and-responding-to-adverse-childhood-experiences.pdf In March 2018, a conference was held by Education Scotland, NHS Health Scotland and the Scottish Government to share best practice on addressing adverse childhood experiences in education.

http://www.healthscotland.scot/events/2018/march/relationships-and-resilience-addressing-childhood-adversity-to-support-childrens-learning-and-wellbeing

In May 2017, NHS Education for Scotland and the Scottish Government published “ Transforming Psychological Trauma: A Knowledge and Skills Framework for the Scottish workforce ”. The Reference and Implementation Group for this Framework now includes representatives of Education Scotland and it is currently developing a training plan to support the workforce to put necessary trauma training in place. This Group will consider how this work can be applied in schools, including how it fits with existing practice around nurturing approaches and development of trauma informed practices in schools.

The Scottish Government provided funding to NHS Lothian in 2017 to support the addition of a VOICES survey component into an evaluation of several other methods of capturing bereaved carer feedback. This work is being taken forward by NHS Lothian and is supported by the City of Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership, and by Marie Curie.

Extensive preparatory work is required to conduct this study and this is underway. Navigating this process and identifying potential barriers and solutions to the effective administration of such surveys will be one of the key lessons from this project.

The Scottish Government looks forward to receiving the findings of the study in due course.

The information requested is not held centrally. This information may be available from NHS Boards.

We are continuing to develop the Health Visiting Services to deliver a consistent enhanced service to all families and grow the workforce to meet additional demands. The Universal Health Visitor Pathway, published in October 2015, outlines a core home visiting programme as a minimum standard to be offered to all families with children under 5 years of age. The pathway is being implemented by NHS Boards on an incremental basis as new health visitors are recruited, and it is expected that full implementation will be achieved by 2020.

The requested information is not held centrally. NHS National Services Scotland, Information Services Division collect and publish sickness absence data at a national and board level once a year. Annual information from 2007 is available at the following link:

http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Workforce/Publications/2017-06-06/Sickness_Absence_M2017.xls .