Chamber and committees

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-12747 on 24 November 2017. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Government welcomes this report, which builds on our existing fostering and adoption evidence base in Scotland. In relation to your enquiry, the Care Inspectorate report states that in 2016 20% of sibling groups placed in either local authority or independent foster placements were separated. Although this is a slight overall improvement from 2015 (24%) we remain absolutely clear that secure attachments, such as children have with their siblings, are central to healthy development and wellbeing.

At this time we are considering the findings in the Care Inspectorate report. However, I acknowledge that the report highlights a need to make sure the best interests of the child are at the heart of all decisions and the complexities faced by professionals involved in each case to work together to find the best immediate and long-term outcome for each child. Separation of sibling groups occurs as a result of a number of considerations; all undoubtedly difficult, and we would always encourage Local Authorities to place siblings together when it is in the best interests of all siblings concerned.

The independent Care Review - being led by children with experience of care - is looking at Scotland’s underpinning legislation, practice and culture to identify where policies need to be improved.

The Scottish Government is taking a range of actions to help increase the number of student teachers.

We have:

• committed £88m this year to make sure every school has access to the right number of teachers with the right skills;

• provided support to universities in developing new innovative routes into teaching;

• recently announced STEM bursaries of £20,000 for career changers to train to become teachers of priority STEM subjects, which includes maths, starting in August 2018;

• launched the second phase of our “Teaching Makes People” recruitment campaign on 30 August and

• created a new route into teaching specifically designed to attract high quality graduates in priority areas and subjects. The tender exercise for this closed on 16 November and the evaluation process will commence shortly.

Student teacher numbers have risen by 7.5 per cent overall from 3,591 in 2016 to 3,861 in 2017. With these measures now in place we expect to see the number of people training as teachers continuing to rise.

The Borders Health and Social Care Partnership is responsible for tackling delayed discharges from hospital. The Scottish Government provides the partnership in Borders with £640,000 per year specifically to deal with this issue.

It is clear that to eradicate child poverty, we must tackle a range of social and economic drivers. Income, however, is the key underlying factor. That’s why the Scottish Parliament unanimously passed the Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill on 8 November, setting in statute four ambitious income-based targets for 2030.

To reach these targets will require a range of action to be taken across government portfolios, and we will publish our proposals for this within the first action plan due by April 2018.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that national performance measures across health and social care lead to the best outcomes for people being cared for, whether in hospital or in the community. The Scottish Government, with support from COSLA, commissioned Sir Harry Burns to undertake an independent review of targets and indicators in health and social care to provide recommendations on how we can have a clearly understood measurement framework across the whole health and social care system. The report was published on 15 November and identifies some key principles and recommendations for using and developing targets and indicators going forward.

The Scottish Government will use these principles and recommendations to undertake a further stage of work, with the aim of ensuring a broader based assessment of the overall quality of care.

The Scottish Government has published a clinical care governance framework as part of the suite of statutory guidance for Integration Authorities. In 2018 we will be working with stakeholders who are delivering arrangements locally to learn from their experiences of implementing the framework to date and to provide updated guidance and support as necessary.

The Chief Medical Officer’s vision is that by 2025, all healthcare professionals will demonstrate Realistic Medicine principles and values through their professionalism.

Delivery of the CMO’s vision will not happen overnight. The desired change in culture will require strong collaborative clinical leadership across the health and care system and there are a series of priority actions set out in the Health & Social Care Delivery Plan that aim to strengthen relationships between professionals and individuals, with the person at the centre of all decisions, reduce waste and tackle unwarranted variation. All of which will help embed Realistic Medicine across Scotland. We will report progress towards achieving these actions through regular updates to the Delivery Plan Programme Board.

There is already evidence of some change in practice from individual clinicians, departments and NHS Boards that aim to reduce waste, reduce unwarranted variation and create a more personalised approach to care, as described in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report Realising Realistic Medicine, and we encourage NHS Boards to share and adopt good practice.

There are two tools which although not specifically developed for Realistic Medicine, they are good examples of the type of approach that will assist clinicians to know whether they're practicing Realistic Medicine through patient feedback. A new measurement tool known as CollaboRATE has been developed and is intended for use to assess the quality of shared decision making in clinical encounters. A patient-reported measure of integration in care delivery is also being developed, known as IntegRATE. As Realistic Medicine becomes part of the way that we deliver care in Scotland, tools such as these will become very important in providing measures that will allow us to assess our ability to truly involve people in the decisions relating to their care. They will also help ensure that this is delivered in a joined up, integrated fashion between professionals, communicating and acting with clarity of role and mutual respect.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-12337 on 20 November 2017. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The new GP contract which has now been agreed between the Scottish Government and the Scottish General Practitioners' committee (SGPC) is a critical part of our plans to transform primary care services in Scotland. GPs will have the opportunity to vote on the new contract at a special SLMC Conference in December.

The proposals include reducing GP workload through the expansion of the primary care multidisciplinary team and allowing GPs to focus on their role as expert medical generalists. This will give GPs a more fulfilling role, with more time to see and treat the patients that need them most.

There will be new investment in expanded teams of health professionals in practices, which may include pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists, paramedics, community mental health workers and non-clinical support workers for example community links workers.

More detail on the primary care workforce will be provided in the National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan: Part 3 Primary Care in 2018.

The new GP contract can be accessed here - http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/11/1343

Midlothian health and Social Care partnership have recently completed a significant piece of work to review and redraw the Practice boundaries to better reflect existing (and potential) list size capacity and planned house building within Midlothian. These changes were developed and agreed by all Practices.