Chamber and committees

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland, an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government, is consulting on how disclosure fees could be discounted for certain groups in future. No decisions have been made on this. The consultation response from stakeholders and the public will help to shape decisions by Scottish Ministers.

Disclosure Scotland has published a draft children’s rights and wellbeing impact assessment which considers the possible impact of the proposals made in the consultation on fee waivers and discounting on the rights of children. In doing so they are considering official statistics and surveys, evidence from Disclosure Scotland’s systems, past consultations and stakeholder engagement.

When the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 is implemented Level 2 with PVG scheme membership disclosures will not be available to children aged under 16 years old. Any fees and fee discounting therefore only has a direct impact on children aged 16 and 17 years old.

A copy of the impact assessment can be found on the Scottish Government’s website at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/disclosure-scotland-act-2020-accredited-body-fees-proposals-discounting-under-pvg-scheme-consultation-childrens-rights-wellbeing-impact-assessment/

The latest statistical release for Free Personal and Nursing Care is for the period 2022-23 and was published on 5 September 2023. Two published excel files accompany the publication, one of which provides data on people aged between 18-64, from the years 2018-19 to 2022-23. This can be found at: Supporting documents - Free Personal and Nursing Care, Scotland, 2022-23 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The relevant information can be found in Tables 3a and 6a.

a) The annual Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) measures physical activity in children from the ages 2 to 15, young people from the age of 16 are captured in adult data. Questions are asked on the subjects of walking, frequency of physical activity, physical activity at school, sports participation and sedentary time. Data is also captured on gender, age and socio-economic status, including deprivation.

b) The Scottish Government recognise the many benefits derived from being active, and investment is being used to drive equality, diversity and inclusion in the sporting system. The Scottish Government work with sportscotland, our national agency for sport, in partnerships with Scottish Governing Bodies of sport (SGBs), local authorities, leisure trusts, sports clubs and community organisations, schools, colleges and universities to provide opportunities for all to participate in sport and physical activity, to break down the barriers, financial or otherwise, that keep too many people from leading active lives.

a) The annual Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) measures physical activity of children from the ages 2 to 15, young people from the age of 16 are captured in adult data. Questions are asked on the subject of walking, frequency of physical activity, physical activity at school, sports participation and sedentary time. Data is also captured on gender, age and socio-economic status, including deprivation.

b) The Scottish Government understand the importance of sport and physical activity for women and girls in Scotland and the positive impact that has on their physical, mental, and social health across all stages in life.

Scottish Women and Girls in Sport Week is an annual Scottish Government campaign which provides an opportunity to celebrate the ways in which women and girls take part in sport and physical activity and increases visibility and participation, highlighting the impact and health benefits it brings to their physical, mental and social health.

Active Schools, one of sportscotland’s flagship programmes, provides more opportunities for children and young people to take part in sport and physical activity, and develops effective pathways between schools and sports clubs in the local community.

In the 2022-23 academic year, the Active Schools programme successfully engaged with over 124,000 girls and young women who made over 2 million visits to Active Schools sport and physical activity sessions. This was an increase of 35% in the number of visits by girls and young women from the previous year.

Fit for Girls is a national programme developed in partnership between sportscotland and the Youth Sport Trust delivered to girls aged between 11 and 18. The workshops aim to inspire and empower girls and young women to create local change in their school, club, and community by developing their self-esteem and confidence so they can inspire more girls to start, maintain, or return to sport and physical activity.

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland, an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government, is consulting on how disclosure fees could be discounted for certain groups in future. No decisions have been made on this. The consultation response from stakeholders and the public will help to shape decisions by Scottish Ministers. Since 2011, Disclosure Scotland has fully subsidised qualifying voluntary organisations to get free PVG disclosures for volunteers. Reviewing the policy on fee waivers and discounts helps to ensure the effective use of public finances and the potential impact of any changes, whilst providing an effective public service.

Disclosure Scotland does not expect any of the options detailed in the consultation to have an impact on child and adult safeguarding. Disclosure Scotland keeps a list of people unsuitable to do regulated work with children and a list of people unsuitable to work with protected adults. If an individual is listed, they are barred from working with the group covered by that list, that includes working as a volunteer. It is a criminal offence for an individual to carry out regulated work with the vulnerable group they are listed for. It is also against the law for an organisation to employ a listed person in regulated work they are barred from. If an individual is listed they are not eligible for Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) scheme membership for that type of work.

In addition, when the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020 is implemented it will become mandatory for anyone carrying out a regulated role, including as a volunteer, to be a member of the PVG Scheme.

Grants to organisations for people with care experience by age

Information on the destination of referrals made for patients in relation to long COVID is not held centrally. This is a matter for territorial NHS Boards.

There are standard procedures in place in hospitals across Scotland for treating patients who present with an overdose, regardless of the substance involved.

As part of the preparation of the SBA (Single Building Assessment process) Scottish Government has had conversations with the wider sector, including Fire Engineers and Assessors where we have discussed the need for a FRAEW (Fire Risk Appraisal of External Wall).

When assessing an existing building’s EWS (External wall system), it is noted that existing buildings cannot be expected to meet modern Building Regulation standards for risk to human life as these buildings were built during a time when less onerous Building Regulations were in force. The PAS 9980 will be used by assessors to make an informed expert decision of whether or not the EWS is a low, medium or high risk and dictate from this whether or not the current build up is tolerable, and no further remediation is required, or the risk is intolerable and therefore remediation should be undertaken.

The aim of a SBA is not to bring a building into compliance with current Building Regulations, but to ensure that the risk to building occupants is reduced to a tolerable level. The focus of the remediation is to follow the recommendations in the SBA in how to bring the relevant parts of the building to either a low, or tolerable risk level. Where large areas of the façade are being remediated, alterations will be required to comply with current (fire) building regulations including the use of acceptable materials. To note that the current ban applies to any new building warrant applications only.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) has developed strong clinically-led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDG) which promote multidisciplinary team working and support local adoption of service improvement programmes.

This includes the Cataract Sub-Specialty Delivery Group which brings together key ophthalmology clinical, operational and managerial experts from across NHS Scotland and Scottish Government which has been commissioned to support an increase in surgical throughout across cataract only surgical sessions. This short life working group has supported several new and innovative pathway developments, some of which are now being successfully scaled up in a number of sites across hospital eye services, including: high volume cataract surgery in ring-fenced sessions, and delivering one cataract every 30 mins, as per Royal College of Ophthalmologists’ guidelines.

In tandem with this, The National Eyecare Workstream is undertaking clinically led peer reviews which supports new and efficient ways of working and shares best practices across the country across a number of ocular sub-specialties, including cataracts.

Additionally, the national Trauma and Orthopaedic (T&O) planned care team based within the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) are responsible for supporting both scheduled (elective) and unscheduled (emergency) orthopaedic service delivery through implementation of sustainable improvements in Scotland.

The orthopaedic services specialty delivery group is multidisciplinary and clinically led to design, develop and implement consensus driven national clinical pathways with focus on high impact opportunities in outpatient management (active clinical triage and patient initiated review), enhanced recovery and same day arthroplasty and also hip fracture standards of care, whilst reducing unwarranted variation. The National T&O team supports delivery of clinically led peer reviews for Health Boards across Scotland, with the cycle repeating every 3 years. These clinically led peer reviews were initiated from the innovative “Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT)” programme. This programme has been highly successful at leading change, reducing variation, improving clinical pathways as well as significantly reducing costs predominantly through reduction in length of stay and improved procurement.

In conjunction with Public Health Scotland (PHS), the T&O team also supports national audits namely the Scottish Hip Fracture Audit and Scottish Arthroplasty Project. These cost effective audits drive continuous improvements through research, standards of care and by a formal governance programme to monitor outcomes. Annual reports are produced for public information.

Furthermore, as part of our wider work to deliver sustained recovery of our Urgent Care services a whole system improvement approach has been adopted. We are working with local teams through the Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative Programme to develop improvement plans which contain actions for the short and medium term focusing across 5 key areas.

This programme of improvement activity is being driven forward by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), which we have commissioned to support Health Boards implement a range of measures to reduce A&E waiting times and improve patient and staff experience.

Some Health Boards have already started to report improvements. These include:

• Improving urgent care pathways in the community and improving links across the primary and secondary care interface.
• Ensuring patients receive the right care in the right place by optimising Flow Navigation Centres and increasing the routes for professional to professional advice and guidance, signposting and scheduling of appointments to A&E where possible.
• Improving access to Hospital at Home services by supporting Boards and partnerships to adopt evidence-based best practice.
• Optimising assessment and care in our Emergency Departments by improving access to ‘same day’ services, the use of early and effective triage, rapid decision-making and streaming to assessment areas.
• Reducing the time people need to spend in hospital by promoting early and effective discharge planning and robust and responsive operational management.