Chamber and committees

We recognise that performance in NHS Forth Valley is not satisfactory. We continue to offer tailored support to Boards, including NHS Forth Valley, in the form of advice from the Scottish Government CAMHS Professional Advisor, Quality Improvement Advisor, Data Analyst and policy support. A local improvement plan is in place with the current focus being on clearing longest waits first. We are monitoring progress on this closely.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19223 on 28 June 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

To date, the Scottish Government has allocated £2.132 million in support of the Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways programme. The proposed allocation for this current financial year is £2 million.

I refer the member to the question S6W-17702 on 19 May 2023. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx

The following table shows how much the Scottish Government has spent on the SME Loan and cashback Scheme in each year since its inception in 2008.

Scottish Government collects information on whether any member of a household making a homelessness application to a local authority (in Scotland) slept rough a) during the 3 months preceding and b) the night before the application.

Data broken down by financial year and local authority is published in the annual Homelessness in Scotland publication, with the most recent providing data up to 2021-22. Tables 2 & 3 of the Main Tables associated with the latest publication contain data related to rough sleeping.

Data is not available prior to 2002-03 as this is the year data collection began.

The data collection defines rough sleeping as any member of the applicant household who has slept outside, in the open air (such as on the streets, or in doorways, parks or bus shelters) or slept in a building or other place not designed for habitation (such as barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations etc.).

Data is not gathered for any household rough sleeping who does not make a homelessness application to a local authority in Scotland.

We do not collect a breakdown of homes brought back into use by local authority.

The number of empty homes returned to use with support from the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership for each year since it was established in 2010 is published in their annual report and is available to view on the website: https://emptyhomespartnership.scot/ 

NHS Scotland’s Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), launched in 2021, is playing a central role in working with Health Boards to sustainably improve and transform Scotland's health care system through innovation, collaboration and clinical leadership.

Hosted by NHS Golden Jubilee and commissioned by the Scottish Government, CfSD brings together existing transformation programmes with an innovation team to support the rapid rollout of new techniques, innovations and safe, fast and efficient pathways for Scotland’s patients.

From 2021-2023, we invested £8.6 million in CfSD programmes and £7.2 million in core staffing to support the transformation programmes, including:

• The Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme
• Clinically led Specialty Delivery Groups (SDGs)
• Once for Scotland pathways including Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT), Discharge Patient Initiated Reviews (PIR) and Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS)
• The Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) pathway, including Cytosponge and Colon Capsule Endoscopy (CCE)
• The National Green Theatres Programme

The CfSD, which is supported by almost 60 WTE staff, work with experts and patients from across Scotland to ensure that people receive the right care, from the right people, at the right time. It also works with partner organisations on a number of national workforce development programmes, including Accelerating the Development of Enhanced Practitioners. Further details on the CfSD’s work can be found here: The national Centre for Sustainable Delivery (nhscfsd.co.uk)

The Scottish Government has had no engagement with the administrators of British Polar Engines Limited.

At the start of the pandemic Scottish Government set up opinion polling research to help understand knowledge, attitudes and claimed behaviour in relation to coronavirus, and motivations and barriers to adopting desired behaviours.

This ran weekly from end of March 2020 to June 2021 when it moved to fortnightly and then approximately monthly from April 2022. The public opinion research company YouGov carried out fieldwork on their online omnibus, with a sample each wave of c.1,000 adults 18+ representative of the online population of Scotland.

Questions were included at various times on the perceived importance of a number of protective behaviours (including face coverings) and how well people felt they were doing these to allow us to monitor these measures over time.

COVID-specific polling ended at the end of March 2023.