Chamber and committees

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.

The Scottish Government welcomes the valuable work that Red Cross and COOP are undertaking in tackling these issues. We note the recommendations within the report and will consider these further as we take forward the implementation of ‘A Connected Scotland’ our strategy to tackle social isolation and loneliness and build social connections.

In December 2017 we published the Race Equality Action Plan outlining more than 120 actions we will take over the course of this Parliament to secure better outcomes for ethnic minorities in Scotland. The plan seeks to address some of the factors that may lead to social isolation and loneliness for minority ethnic communities, including poverty, housing, and community cohesion.

The Scottish Government already provides funding of £113,000 per year (2017-2020) to the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP) to support the delivery of education to children and young people from travelling cultures. In 2018-19 we awarded STEP additional funding of £275,000 to support and share best practice in delivering education to Gypsy/Traveller families for all ages and stages – from early years to adult learning – and to embed and systematise effective approaches across Scotland.

The Scottish Government is providing an additional £775,000 to strengthen the provision of education to Gypsy/Traveller families over the period 2018-2022. £275,000 of this was awarded to STEP in 2018-19 to support, share and systematise best practice in delivering education to children and young people from travelling cultures. This will pave the way for a further £0.5m from the Child Poverty Delivery Fund which will deliver flexible family education to Gypsy/Traveller families. This is in addition to the £113,000 per year (2017-2020) which we already provide to STEP.

When we published ‘Every Child, Every Chance: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018-2022’ we made a commitment to invest £0.5m in flexible family learning with Gypsy/Traveller families over the lifetime of the Plan (2018-2020). This will build on additional funding of £275,000 (2018-20) to STEP to strengthen the delivery of education to children and young people in the Gypsy/Traveller community. This work is underway and – alongside engagement with Gypsy/Traveller communities – will inform how the Child Poverty Delivery Fund money will be spent over the next three years .

PATH Scotland has received funding of £35k for each of the years 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 through the Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund. This funding supports the Developing Management and Leadership Skills (DMLS) in Public Life, Education and Employment Programme, which has been developed as a positive action measure to address the absence of minority ethnic men and women in leadership roles at all levels of public life, education and employment.