Chamber and committees

The Community Bus fund was launched on 22 September 2023, therefore it is too early to carry out an assessment of impact. A full evaluation will be carried out following the completion of projects in 2024.

It is not possible to report accurately on the number of additional CAMHS cases taken on since 2021 as the current aggregate data set does not allow identification of separate individuals, it only gives a snapshot of the total number of open cases at any one time.

In the NHS Recovery Plan, published in 2021, we committed to provide sufficient funding for around 320 additional staff in CAMHS over the next 5 years, with the potential to increase capacity for CAMHS cases by over 10,000. This estimate was based on the Choice and Partnership Approach (CAPA) capacity model, where each full time clinician can hold around 40 open cases at any one time, and manage around 40 new cases per year.

From March 2021 to September 2023, 295 WTE CAMHS staff have been added to the workforce, significantly increasing capacity to manage CAMHS cases. We see this reflected in numbers waiting - the total number of children and young people waiting for treatment has fallen from 10,499 in December 2021 to 5,344 in September 2023.

Our National Discharge Without Delay Steering Group has representatives from every NHS Board and Health and Social Care Partnership in Scotland. The group leads on improvement and sharing best practice across Scotland on areas related to good hospital to community transfer or discharge planning. The group meets monthly and there is a standing agenda item on support for unpaid carers which has highlighted examples of good practice.

We have funded NHS Education for Scotland to develop three training modules for the health and social care workforce, to help them to identify, include and support unpaid carers which we expect to be launched in January 2024. This will include highlighting carers’ right to involvement in hospital discharge decisions.

We have also funded Healthcare Improvement Scotland to work to improve practice on carer involvement across health, with a focus on carer involvement in hospital discharge.

As part of this, in September 2023, we brought together Health and Social Care Partnership carer lead officers and Carer Centre Managers to focus on this issue and share good practice.

We remain committed to delivering a pilot of universal free school meals in secondary schools, and continue to work closely with key delivery partners on our free school meal expansion programme. We have prioritised the work to expand free school meals on the basis of eligibility for Scottish Child Payment, and this has been supported through the budget.

As transport is a devolved matter there is no formal requirement for Scottish Government to discuss the next contract for the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service with representatives of the UK Government. Transport Scotland officials do, however, have regular discussions with UK Government Department for Transport officials regarding a number of maritime issues.

The Scottish Government’s position is that lifeline ferry services are classed as Services of Public Economic Interest under the UK Subsidy Control Act.

The Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways (DPDP) Programme is being developed, and it is intended to replace the paper prescription with a digital solution in community settings. The programme has been commissioned and funded by the Scottish Government. It is being jointly delivered by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) in collaboration with stakeholders across Scotland.

The inclusion of prescriptions for stoma items has been raised by the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer with the DPDP programme team, and consideration is being given as to how stoma items can be brought within the scope of the programme.

Addressing obesity is a priority for the Scottish Government, this financial year we have provided core funding of £8.25 million to health boards to deliver adult, children and young people’s weight management services.

The Scottish Government remains committed to taking forward the wide range of actions set out in our 2018 Diet and Healthy Weight Delivery Plan to deliver our vision for a Scotland where everyone eats well and has a healthy weight.

The quantitative impact of all policies is being tracked through our nationally representative survey on health. The latest results, for the year 2022, were published on 5 December 2023 on the Scottish Government website . Obesity rates were 29% for adults and 18% of children were at risk of obesity. Obesity rates have been measured annually in the Scottish Health Survey since 2008.

The Deputy National Clinical Director and Scottish Government officials met with the clinical leads for ovarian cancer in the Northern Cancer Alliance (NCA) and the South East Scotland Cancer Network (SCAN) during Summer 2023.

Ongoing improvements to the service, including waiting times for treatment, and any potential support required from the Scottish Government were discussed.

There is no specific provision for long COVID research in the Scottish Government Budget for 2024-25.

Within the Scottish Government, funding of Health and Care Research comes under the remit of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).

The CSO's Translational Clinical Studies (TCS) Committee and the Health Improvement, Protection and Services Research (HIPS) Committee each meet twice per year to consider funding applications. Details of the application process are published on the CSO website.

https://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/grant-funding/response-mode-funding-schemes/

Applications on long-COVID are welcomed. In common with all other applications, these would go through the CSO's standard independent peer review process.

To date 2 research projects on long COVID have been funded via this route:

HIPS/23/08

Long COVID And Frontline Public Service Occupations: Impacts On Employees And Organisations

University of Stirling

Dr Alice MacLean/Professor Kate Hunt

Funding awarded £296,960

HIPS/22/33

Caring for Long COVID in Primary Care: Using Patient and Professional Experience to Build Co-Designed Solutions. A Participatory, Mixed Methods Study.

University of Glasgow

Professor Catherine O’Donnell

Funding awarded £297,900

Through UK-wide funding agreements, researchers based in Scotland are able to access the following research funding programmes administered by the National Institute for Health & Care Research (NIHR):

Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME)

Evidence Synthesis

Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR)

Health Technology Assessment (HTA)

Invention for Innovation (i4i)

Programme Development Grants (PDG)

Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR)

Public Health Research (PHR)

Research for Social Care (RfSC)

Within their individual remits, the above programmes can consider applications for research in long COVID.

CSO is working with the health research community in Scotland to ensure awareness of these opportunities and to maximise the number of high quality applications from Scotland to these research funding programmes going forward.