Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is developing a plan for a staged approach to the return of services that contribute to the wellbeing of residents in care homes. The plan, which will be published in due course, is aimed at people, organisations and professionals including health and social care services visiting care homes to support people where it is clinically safe to do so. It is important that the resumption of services and suppliers operating within care homes is done incrementally in order to protect those living and working in care homes. The use of non-face to face methods such as telephone or near me consultation, which has been in operation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic for some services, will continue wherever possible.

Assistive technology support is largely provided by local authorities, housing providers and third sector organisations. The majority of the support provided is via telecare services which has been a well-established lifeline for disabled or elderly people for a long time. Local Authorities have trained teams who support people to utilise technology at home, for example to use their red button service for specific help or other helpful technologies which can remind people to take important medicines or bring on the lights automatically when getting in and out of bed. Guidance on telecare was issued at the start of the pandemic for local authority providers and to ensure that suitable support was in place to continue to deliver a sustained service. Digital has played an important role in the response to Covid-19, for example through NHS Near Me video consulting which was designed with users to be intuitive and easy to use while also being accessible through technology that many people have in the palm of their hands. This way of developing and designing services has been important in supporting the scale of adoption that we have seen to date.

Part 4 of the Health (Tobacco, Nicotine and Care) (Scotland) Act 2016 ] also places a duty on health boards to provide or secure the provision of communication equipment, and the support in using that equipment, to any person who has lost their voice or has difficulty speaking. Scottish Government officials have been in contact with the NHS national service - Scottish Centre for Technology for Communication Impaired (SCTCI) - to hear how they are meeting the challenges faced during the pandemic. SCTCI (and other specialist services who hold the legislative duty) advise that services have continued to be available during this time, subject to necessary adaptations of processes and procedures to ensure compliance with all relevant Covid-19 guidance on infection prevention and control.

This is an operational matter for Scottish Natural Heritage and I have asked the Chief Executive to write to the Member to provide details.

The Scottish Government is required by law to review lockdown restrictions every three weeks. The next review falls on 10 August. On the basis of the scientific advice, and subject to all other risk mitigation measures being appropriately implemented, the current guidance in relation to school settings is clear; there is no requirement for physical distancing between children in primary schools and secondary schools. The guidance is available here: Coronavirus (COVID-19): Guidance on preparing for the start of the new school term in August 2020

The licensing of medicines is reserved to the UK Government.

A small number of the 56 research projects funded through the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office (CSO) rapid research in COVID-19 call are investigating potential treatments for COVID-19. These projects are examining either existing, or are an early stage exploration of new, therapy. If the results of these studies are promising, further research evaluations will be needed beyond the CSO funded projects before application in routine clinical practice could be considered. In line with CSO’s standard conditions of grant, responsibility for any exploitation of research results from these projects rests with the grant holding Institutions and these Institutions must inform CSO of any proposed discussion or negotiation on commercial exploitation of the results.

The Covid-19 Education Recovery Group, which brings together councils, teachers’ representatives, parent bodies and trades unions, continue to meet to discuss the next steps as we plan for the safe re-opening of schools and on the 30th of July we published detailed guidance for the full time return to schools in August.

The Scottish Government has published guidance for the community learning and development sector, developed in partnership with local authorities and youth work providers, setting out health and safety guidance to ensure a safe return to normal provision of youth work activity. Youth work activities can take many forms, for example outdoor youth work, which has, in line with the route map, been able to resume from 13 July.

The decision to permit youth work activities to take place in local authority venues is a decision for local authorities, who will take into account their own health and safety needs and whether they can safely meet government guidelines and guidance on the resumption of educational activities.

The regulation of medicine pricing is reserved to the UK Government The Scottish Government continues to keep open all lawful options, including the use of Crown Use Licensing, to ensure the Scottish population can access the treatments they need.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-30838 on 31 July 2020. 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

We continue to work with key partners across Scotland to ensure that information is available to all staff when and where they need. This includes work to develop Regional Clinical Portals and the roll out of HEPMA ( Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration ) systems across Scotland, with NHS Lothian starting their implementation of HEPMA during July. These projects support interoperability of data sharing between existing electronic systems, and improvement in the quality of electronic information shared amongst clinicians.

For the longer term, and as part of the Digital Health & Care strategy, a National Digital Platform is being developed and has started to bring together service data that is appropriately accessible to the workforce regardless of where they are based. This includes an open source electronic patient record called ‘Openeyes’ for ophthalmology that enables asynchronous (non-real time) consultations with patients, supports Emergency Eyecare Treatment Centres and shares the information needed to treat patients between optometrists and ophthalmologists. This is currently being implemented within the National Digital Platform for use in NHS Forth Valley and NHS Grampian prior to further expansion across Scotland.

The First Minister has indicated that an update on the timescales for the resumption of driving lessons would be made on 30 July. Until the resumption of driving lessons has been confirmed, there will be no resumption of car driving tests in Scotland, except in the limited circumstances where they are available to critical workers.