Chamber and committees

The Learning Disability and Autism team meets Health and Social Care Partnership leads on a regular basis and since October last year, has met individually with 21 of the 31 HSCPs to discuss their local work on learning disabilities and autism.

In addition the team attends the regular meetings of the relevant Social Work Scotland sub group at which all HSCPs are represented.

Dates and Partnerships met with are:

A new National Post Diagnostic Support Service pilot was launched on 1 December 2020. This has now been extended until end of March 2023.

Post Diagnostic support is provided by seven organisations, where, following a diagnosis of autism, individuals, parents and carers living across Scotland are routed to appropriate support to understand and embrace their identity as an autistic person.

The Scottish Government has provided funding for Post Diagnostic Support which totals £500,000 in financial year 2020-21 and £544,000 in financial year 2021-22.

The Scottish Government is piloting Adult Neurodevelopmental Pathways to support Boards to implement a single diagnostic pathway that will include ADHD and Autism. The pilot started in January and will last for 12 months. The results of this work, including a final report, will be available next year.

Since Scotland’s Redress Scheme was launched in December 2021, 1468 survivor applications and 88 next of kin applications have been received. All applications are reviewed within six weeks of receipt and this review identifies those requiring further information and those ready for verification prior to sending to Redress Scotland for determination.

189 redress applications have been passed to Redress Scotland for consideration and of those, 136 have had an initial determination made.

Each application varies in complexity, with survivors and applicants requiring differing levels of support to complete the application and a dependency on other organisations to complete the required verifications around care settings and any previous relevant payments made.

We recognise that, for some applicants, the process is taking longer than they expected. We continue to work with them, and partners, to look at ways to improve the scheme and remain committed to ensuring it continues to be swifter and less adversarial than taking court action.

Circulars to enact the 4.5% pay uplift for NHS Medical and Dental staff were published on 5 August 2022.

This pay uplift will be backdated to 1 April 2022.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information you request regarding defibrillators in schools. Decisions on whether to install defibrillators in schools are a matter for local authorities, in light of local circumstances and priorities.

The Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy 2021- 2026 sets a clear aim of increasing the number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests which have a defibrillator applied before the ambulance service arrive from 8% to 20%. Work is ongoing to build the evidence base on the location of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Scotland, and the existing locations of defibrillators. This will support the strategic placement of defibrillators across Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to early diagnosis which is why we continue to invest in our £44 million Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme. In 2021-22, DCE funded the North Cancer Alliance to support community pharmacy in the identification of patients with symptoms suspicious of cancer and, where necessary, prompt referral to an urgent suspicion of cancer (USC) pathway.

Learnings from this early work will be shared with the Early Cancer Diagnosis Programme Board and help inform possible wider roll-out across NHS Scotland.

A new early cancer diagnosis vision is under development as part of Scotland’s new cancer strategy, due to be published Spring 2023, and will consider the role of community pharmacies in supporting earlier diagnosis efforts.

The Scottish Government fully supports the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) in its efforts to meet the needs of children and young people with additional support needs. Every child’s individual needs are considered by SCRA, based on information provided by other agencies and professionals. SCRA has, for a number of years, worked on support and assistance for neurodiverse children and families. They are creating sensory spaces in their hearings centres, the first of which opened in March this year, and have updated information material and internal guidance to staff in conjunction with the charity Reach for Autism. They are currently working on plans to develop a network of local neurodiversity champions to further promote and address the specific needs of children and families in Children’s Hearings.

The new SCRA digital case management system, now in its second full year of operation, is capable of recording specific data relating to protected characteristics and SCRA are considering how this can be used to the greatest effect.

The Complex Pelvic Mesh Removal Service in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde receives referrals from Health Boards across Scotland and a number of patients are seen on a weekly basis.

Public Health Scotland confirm that between July 2020 (when the Service was established) and December of that year, seven removal procedures were undertaken, whilst 24 procedures were carried out in 2021. In order to protect patient confidentiality a precise figure cannot yet be provided for 2022, as fewer than five procedures have been performed so far this year. For similar reasons, precise numbers of full and partial removals cannot be quoted here, though the majority of surgeries undertaken have been full removals.

The Covid 19 pandemic has undoubtedly had a significant impact on both waiting times and the numbers of procedures carried out, as indeed is the case in many speciality areas across the NHS as a whole. However, the Scottish Government expects the Health Board to improve this situation, and will work with it in the coming months to that end.

All occurrences of mesh complications are treated individually depending on the circumstances of the patient in question, and decisions on the most appropriate treatment are a private matter between the patient and her clinicians. Many patients will undergo full removal of their mesh implant whilst, in other cases, partial removal may be more appropriate and therefore be the preferred option. There may also be circumstances where other, more conservative treatments are considered. What is fundamental in all cases, however, is that patients are aware of and understand the benefits of the treatments open to them, the risks, the alternative treatments, and the potential consequences of doing nothing. Therefore, in each individual case, and in consistence with GMC guidance on consent, it is expected all appropriate and available treatments are discussed with the patient in question, allowing them to make a fully informed decision on their care.

Whilst prevalence of COVID remains high this is not translating into severe illness and deaths in the same way as earlier in the pandemic due largely to vaccination. So we would encourage everyone who is eligible to take up their boosters as soon as these are offered to ‘top up’ their immune response. The autumn booster vaccination will be offered to people aged over 50 and those at highest risk aged 5 and over – this will include people with a chronic neurological disease.