Chamber and committees

The Cancer Action Plan 2023-2026 sets out our ambitious programme of work to ensure access to cancer prehabilitation.

The Scottish Government is working with experts across health and social care to ensure timely access to all services providing the multi-modal, tiered and personalised interventions that make up prehabilitation. This includes developing the frameworks to screen, assess and signpost people affected by cancer to the relevant services as soon as possible. A national website has been created in partnership with those with lived experience to provide universal and accessible information and advice. A new primary care cancer education platform for NHS Scotland that will feature prehabilitation advice will also go live early 2024 to enable effective decision-making and support earlier diagnosis efforts.

Prehabilitation is a key part of the Optimal Cancer Diagnostic Pathways and Clinical Management Pathways (CMPs) that have been developed for Lung Cancer and the CMP for Adult Brain Cancers, also in development. The Scottish Government has also provided £350,000 to develop and implement universal prehabilitation workshops for the Maggie’s Centres. Further funding has been allocated to support each board area to adopt the nationally provided tools to reinforce care pathways, directly benefiting those affected by cancer, including less survivable cancers.

Cancer prehabilitation is a complex, multi-modal intervention and personalised to suit individual need. It is not achieved through accessing a single service, nor is it likely to be delivered in a single setting. As such, no single mechanism or metric has been identified for measuring equity of access across Scotland, the UK or internationally. Instead proxy measured are used, such as numbers referred to a specific service/intervention and uptake and/or adherence.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery is leading improvement work that will define core outcome measures for cancer prehabilitation in Scotland, and where possible this will include activity data.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery is leading improvement and pathway redesign work via their Macmillan National Improvement Advisor for Cancer Prehabilitation. This will see core outcome measures agreed for use across Scotland, and introduce processes for data collection and reporting.

Some targeted and specialised prehabilitation has been developed within NHS settings and further services are being developed with funding from the Macmillan and Scottish Government’s Transforming Cancer Care programme to ensure people can access the right care in the right place at the right time.

Table One shows the funding allocated to NHS Lothian for improving child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in 2021-2022 and for a broader range of Mental Health Services, including CAMHS, from 2022-2023. Allocations for the current financial year, 2023-2024 have not yet concluded.

It should be noted that allocations from 2022-2023 onwards were made from the Mental Health Outcomes Framework, which bundled a number of funding streams to allow NHS Boards flexibility to meet local priorities against the stated outcomes. The total allocation can be utilised to support improvements in CAMHS, psychological therapies, eating disorder care, primary care and children and young people’s neurodevelopmental services, as well as ongoing innovation and service reform. It is therefore not possible to provide a specific figure for funding allocated to CAMHS improvement from 2022-23 onwards.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the final allocations to specific Integration Joint Boards. NHS Lothian will be able to advise on the funding received for CAMHS in the West Lothian Council area resulting from their delegation arrangements.

Table One:

It is too early to determine the impact of the withdrawal of Flexible Workforce Development Fund on college financing. However, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council will continue to support colleges to understand and minimise any negative impacts on short, medium and long-term financial sustainability.

We remain committed to supporting an education and skills system that responds to the needs of Scotland’s employers/learners and we would encourage employers to continue to work with colleges, building on the relationships they now have. SFC will work with the sector to consider how we make best use of the resources available to enable colleges to maximise opportunities for learners and be responsive to employers’ needs, building on the strong foundations they have established over recent years.

Case rates are uncertain and vary over time with different social mixing patterns. According to the Winter COVID-19 Infection Study, prevalence of COVID-19 in Scotland showed early signs of decreasing in the two weeks to 3 Jan.

Public Health Scotland continue to gather epidemiological information on seasonal respiratory infection activity in Scotland and publish the latest data in their National respiratory infection and COVID-19 statistics report.

The Scottish Government’s decision-making throughout all COVID-19 vaccination programmes has been guided by the expert clinical advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and at present they are not recommending any additional action this winter.

The winter vaccination programme began in September 2023 and all those eligible were invited forward prior to Christmas. The vast majority of vaccinations were completed before the festive break, but appointments are available until the end of the programme on 31 March 2024. So far, over 1.38 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, equating to 56.8% of the eligible population.

As the majority of the programme is now complete acceleration is not required, with a focus between now and the end of March on encouraging eligible people who to this point have chosen not to receive vaccination to come forward. PHS and the Health Boards have developed additional communications to support this. In addition the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Nursing Officer, and Chief Pharmaceutical Officer have been working to encourage uptake within the health and social care workforce, to support winter resilience across health and care services.

Medical Associate Professions (MAPs) are not new professions and have been practising across the UK for 20 years. They are an important and valued part of the NHS Scotland workforce.

Guidance regarding ways in which MAPs communicate and engage with patients and the wider public, was issued by the Scottish Government to all Health Boards via a Director’s Letter in 2016.

A programme of work jointly led by the Scottish Government and NHS Education for Scotland, and supported by a Programme Board consisting of partners from across the healthcare system will consider the most appropriate means of public engagement in relation to any future plans for this workforce.

In addition, as part of an ongoing programme of stakeholder engagement it is our intention to host a number of workshops throughout 2024, providing an opportunity for a wide range of key stakeholders to engage in detailed discussion regarding key elements of this work.

a) A list of external consulting firms engaged to provide consultancy for research, co-design, engagement, and external support, and the cost of these contracts to date is provided in the following table.

These figures are as of 15 January and are provisional and subject to adjustment prior to and at year-end. Further costs may be incurred before the year-end.

The Scottish Government has not provided any funding directly to Family Mediation West from 2019.

Relationships Scotland operate a network of 21 Member Services across Scotland, including Family Mediation West.

Since 2016, the Scottish Government has provided Relationships Scotland with core funding via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund, which will continue until March 2025.

Since 2020, the Scottish Government has provided Relationships Scotland with grant funding to provide child contact services.

The Scottish Government is engaging with the UK Government on their response to the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council’s (IIAC) report. We continue to work with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to understand the implications of any future changes to legislation. This typically includes modelling relating to awards and applications.