Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government jointly launched the Local Governance Review with COSLA to consider how powers are shared across national and local government, and with communities. The Review reflects our shared commitment to Scotland’s different places and diverse communities having a direct say over decisions which affect them. We are taking a whole system approach which looks across Scotland’s public services and ensures that measures to empower people and places in different spheres of governance are cohesive and mutually supportive.

Local Authorities have a statutory responsibility to provide education to all children of school age. The Scottish Government estimates how much local government needs to fund local services and then applies a needs-based formula to allocate the total available funding, which is agreed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on behalf of all 32 councils.

This Government is committed to closing the poverty related attainment gap and that is why we are investing £750 million in the Attainment Scotland Fund over the course of this parliament. We know that empowered teachers, given the right resources and appropriate support, are making a massive difference in our classrooms and are transforming lives.

Pupil Equity Funding was introduced in 2017 as a new way of working to close the attainment gap by providing money directly to head teachers, who know their young people best. Giving head teachers and schools the power to choose where to target support and interventions and decide what will make a real difference to their pupils and communities means the life chances of our young people can be significantly improved.

The Government recognises the value of building relationships in work to tackle the poverty related attainment gap and is investing £750m in the Scottish Attainment Challenge over the course of this Parliament. Funding for the programmes delivered by this funding is committed until the end of the current parliament, allowing local authorities and schools to plan across multiple years. The Government is committed to closing the poverty related attainment gap and has no plans to stop further investment in the Attainment Scotland Fund in future years.

Further, the Scottish Government and Education Scotland provide a variety of comprehensive guidance to Local Authorities and schools on the use of this funding. Each Local Authority also has a dedicated Attainment Advisor from Education Scotland. Attainment Advisors play a significant role in helping schools to plan and develop sustainable strategies and approaches to closing the poverty-related attainment gap, and supporting them to use data to plan, monitor and evaluate their impact.

Our Stroke Improvement Plan (2014) sets out a comprehensive programme for further reducing the number of deaths from stroke and improving stroke treatment and care across the whole patient pathway including rehabilitation.

The Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA) monitors the quality of care provided by the hospitals in all Health Boards by collating data collected by the stroke Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs).

To improve services effectively the Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme recognises the needs to set clear aims which have been established through the Scottish Stroke Care Standards (2016) and the priority actions from the Stroke Improvement Plan. The Stroke Improvement Programme Lead and Scottish SSCA National Clinical Coordinator work closely with NHS Boards to ensure key priorities from the Stroke Improvement Plan are implemented and monitored.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport met the Chair and Chief Executive of the Professional Standards Authority on Tuesday 6 November 2018 and discussed the programme at that time.

The Authority’s acknowledged expertise lies in the field of regulatory and governance standards. It has no statutory role relating to operational issues such as recruitment and deployment of specific professions.

Counselling and Psychotherapy in Scotland (COSCA) are a professional body for counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland and they maintain a voluntary register of practitioners and organisations in Scotland.

The Scottish Government supports a number of third sector organisations through the £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund. Local Authorities and schools are empowered to decide how they use this funding to support young people living in poverty with many Local Authorities and schools choosing to invest some of this funding in services offered by the Third Sector, including Barnardo’s Scotland.

We recognise the varied and valuable contributions third sector organisations such as Barnardo’s Scotland make to tackling the poverty related attainment gap. Through a National Third Sector Engagement working group, the Scottish Government works collaboratively with Education Scotland and the third sector to develop opportunities for their further engagement in the Scottish Attainment Challenge. Schools guidance has been developed which provides advice on engaging with the third sector to help improve outcomes for young people. This is available from: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/
sac79-sac-and-third-sector-partnerships.pdf .

Recent Scottish Government evaluation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge highlighted that collaboration continues to feature strongly and that collaborations with the third sector continue to be valued by Challenge Authorities. Local Authorities also reported their encouragement and support for schools to collaborate with third sector and other partners in planning and implementing Pupil Equity Funding. The Challenge will continue to enable young people to benefit from the important interventions the third sector can offer. The evaluation report is available here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/
evaluation-attainment-scotland-fund-interim-report-year-3/ .

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that eviction for rent arrears is a last resort and we have robust measures in place to help tenants in arrears sustain their tenancy wherever possible. The number of evictions in Scotland accounted for only 0.4% of social sector tenancies in 2017-18.

The Scottish Government notes the publication of the Shelter Scotland report, Evictions by social landlord in Scotland 2016-2018 with interest. We will be discussing the recommendations in the report with Shelter and consider what action, if any, needs to be taken.

12 out of 18 (67%) social landlords report that they have met the minimum site standards for Gypsy/Traveller sites. The following table provides a breakdown by local authority/Registered Social Landlord. The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) continues to monitor, assess and report on landlords’ achievement of and ongoing compliance with the minimum site standards. SHR is engaging with landlords to ensure that progress is being made on sites that do not currently meet the standards.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that eviction for rent arrears is a last resort and we have robust measures in place to help tenants in arrears sustain their tenancy wherever possible. The number of evictions in Scotland accounted for only 0.4% of social sector tenancies in 2017-18. L andlords need to have legal remedies to deal with the small minority of tenants who won’t engage with them to resolve their arrears.

Tenancy sustainment forms part of the Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans that each local authority has provided to the Scottish Government. We are identifying ways to work with social housing providers to use all opportunities to support housing sustainment, and we will specify expectations resulting from this work in the Homelessness Code of Guidance.

The National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain endorsed the Report in its entirety at their meeting on 26th June 2019. At the same meeting, it was agreed to establish a Chronic Pain Patient Reference Group to help ensure that a wide representation of the lived experience of chronic pain is taken in to consideration and informs service improvements. It is envisaged that this group, along with other patient involvement, will provide a patient perspective to help coproduce information about chronic pain self-management guided by the Scottish Government Health Literacy Action Plan 2015 – 2025 and other stakeholders, including NHS Inform, to help ensure that it is appropriate and widely accessible.

Developing strong links between primary and secondary care, as well as acute and chronic pain services, in order to create a clear model of care, is one of the seven areas identified in the Chronic Pain Specialty Group's Design Workshop Report, as most likely to make a difference to people presenting with Chronic Pain. As such, it will also receive particular focus as part of the next steps and implementation plan associated with the report, currently being drafted. Part of this will be to identify how people living with chronic pain can inform themselves, take ownership of and be supported to self-manage their condition, including involvement in decisions about their medication, guided by the Chronic Pain Prescribing Strategy (2018) along with raising awareness of what self-management is and what options are available to them.

Making information about Chronic Pain self-management widely accessible as well as widely used is another of the seven areas identified in the Chronic Pain Specialty Group's Design Workshop Report, as most likely to make a difference to people presenting with Chronic Pain. As such, it will receive particular focus as part of the next steps and implementation plan associated with the report, currently being drafted, along with helping to make people aware of what self-management is and what options are available to them. This plan will be devised in consultation with stakeholders.

Provision of good quality data and measurement of Chronic Pain services and outcomes for those who use the services is recognised as being essential to understand, forecast and plan future staffing, service provision and improve outcomes for patients.

A Healthcare Needs Assessment of Adult Chronic Pain Services in Scotland, undertaken by the Scottish Public Health Network, was published in September 2018. In addition, Dundee University recently undertook a Data and Measurement Project for Chronic Pain Services to inform national service improvement and to help develop and test a Core Minimum Dataset (CMD) and Quality Performance Indicators (QPIs) for Chronic Pain.

Both these pieces of work, combined with NHS Chronic Pain data collated on an ongoing basis by Information Services Division (ISD) and the findings of a short life working group on the Chronic Pain workforce convened by the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain, will inform next steps and future service improvement, as part of the Scottish Pain Specialty Group’s Design Workshop Report Implementation Plan currently being drafted.

Additionally, the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain has been working with the Faculty of Pain Medicine and other stakeholders to understand the pressures around workforce capacity and training needs/opportunities for healthcare professionals working within specialist pain multi-disciplinary teams within hospital clinics and in the community. This has informed the context of the Chronic Pain workshops.