Chamber and committees

The Endometriosis Referral Care Pathway for Scotland was published by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery in January 2023 and distributed to NHS Scotland Boards.

Private investment has always been a critical element of woodland creation delivery with public investment through grant support being necessary to reduce the up-front costs, given the long period before financial returns from forestry. Land prices and the financial attractiveness of forestry investments are affected by a range of factors of which grant rates are just one element.

Grant rates under the Forestry Grant scheme were set in 2014 and haven’t been increased since then. At that time the rates were set at a level to contribute 80% of the cost of planting and looking after trees until established. As a result of inflation since 2013, grant rates in 2023 now contribute a lower proportion of costs, in the range 50-60%.

Where woodland creation projects are receiving significant private sector investment, for example through sale of carbon credits, the value of the contribution from forestry grants can be reduced further.

Other UK countries and Ireland also offer comparable, or higher grant rates for woodland creation compared to Scotland.

The Scottish Government did not provide any funding directly to Relationships Scotland Family Mediation Highland in 2022.

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

In 2022, the Scottish Government provided Relationships Scotland with core funding via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund; and with grant funding to provide child contact services.

Our emergency planning portal, ready.scot, was updated in June 2022 to include a new "Learn" section to support the public, community groups and voluntary sector partners by raising awareness of emergency resilience structures and processes, and helping them to understand how they may participate in an effective and joined up response to an emergency. Between March and April 2023, we also ran a series of 4 online community resilience workshops which were attended by approximately 240 participants.

We will continue to work with the sector, and in particular Local Authorities, who have the lead role on engaging with local communities, to understand their training needs and provide additional resources if required.

The Scottish Government did not provide any direct funding to Relationships Scotland Tayside & Fife in 2022.

Relationships Scotland operate a network of 21 Member Services across Scotland, including Relationships Scotland Tayside & Fife.

In 2022, the Scottish Government provided Relationships Scotland with core funding via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund; and with grant funding to provide child contact services.

The Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF) has been available since July 2021. We ask NHS Boards to report on the number of young inpatients (and therefore families) who benefit from the Fund.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-16109 on 3 April 2023 in relation to families supported through YPFF in 2021-22.

Since YPFF was established in 2021 NHS Boards reported that 6887 families were supported through YPFF.

The Scottish Government is working to take forward the action in the Women’s Health Plan that seek to enable all patients to access mid-trimester abortion care locally or regionally. Progress has been made, with all mainland NHS Boards now offering services up to at least 20 weeks’ gestation as recommended by the 2022 Healthcare Improvement Scotland Sexual Health Standards.

The Scottish Government commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop a specification to deliver a national service for abortions between 20 to 24 weeks gestation within Scotland. NSS has been discussing its specification with NHS Boards and is also exploring other delivery options for the service.

We are also working with individual NHS Boards to support clinicians who wish to receive training to deliver later stage abortions to be granted funding to do so, and to encourage NHS Boards to ensure that patients close to 20 weeks’ gestation are prioritised for appointments.

Since the publication of the Respiratory Care Action Plan for Scotland (RCAP), the Scottish Government has established the Scottish Respiratory Advisory Committee (SRAC) to oversee its implementation.

Since publication of the Plan, the SRAC identified three initial areas of focus: child to adult transition, pulmonary rehab and respiratory data.

The Child to Adult Transitions subgroup has produced a set of recommendations to ensure children with asthma and other respiratory conditions have the best possible care and treatment as they move into adult service.

We are continuing to focus on improving access to pulmonary rehabilitation. The British Thoracic Society recently published a refreshed quality statement on pulmonary rehab . We are working closely with services across Scotland to identify improvements in delivery and to ensure more people have access.

Public Health Scotland have been commissioned to begin scoping work to develop a respiratory audit programme. This will allow us to monitor the delivery of the RCAP and ensure people are receiving the best possible care, treatment and support for respiratory conditions.

In addition, the Respiratory Specialist Delivery Group (SDG) at the Centre for Sustainability Delivery (CfSD) is progressing significant improvements across a vast range of services, teams, and NHS Boards. This work aligns with the commitments in the RCAP, and we are working closely with the CfSD to ensure that these links continue.

The survey by the Royal College of Psychiatrists describes some of the issues with current mental health service provision that we are working hard to improve. The recent Audit Scotland report concluded that our new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy "recognises the importance of a whole system approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing and provides a foundation for better joint working ". The Mental Health Strategy Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan will be published in the coming weeks, and these will set out the actions we intend to take to address many of the issues across the whole system.

We fully agree with the conclusion in Audit Scotland’s report that our focus cannot just be on access to specialist services for mental health. As well as many other key pieces of work, our commitment to this is shown by:

• Our investment of £51m in the adult Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund since 2021. Approximately 3,300 grants were made to local organisations across Scotland in its first two years.
• Our continuing national roll-out of our Distress Brief Intervention programme.
• Our ongoing investment (£4.4m in 2022/23) in NHS 24’s Mental Health Hub, which continues to receive approx. 2,500 calls a week.

To support the range of help available, mental health spending has doubled in cash terms from £651m to £1.3bn since 2007.

I fully recognise that young people continue to be impacted by the disruption arising from COVID-19. The package of support in place has rightly evolved to reflect the latest circumstances, with decisions being matched to the assessment approaches taken each year.

SQA took a sensitive, evidence-based approach to grading for the 2023 results and continued the existing modifications to National Courses from 2022 – as part of the transition back to pre-pandemic standards - informed by evaluation of the assessment arrangements in places in 2022 and feedback from the National Qualifications 2023 Group, which includes representatives of teachers, parents and learners. SQA will also be undertaking an evaluation of their 2023 assessment arrangements to inform decisions going forward.

The Scottish Government and Education Scotland published the Equity Audit in January 2021 which involved an evidence review of local, national and international literature, along with a representative sample of 54 schools in Scotland. This helped our understanding of the impact that COVID-19 and school building closures had on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and set clear areas of focus for accelerating recovery, including the refresh of the Scottish Attainment Challenge programme.

In addition, Officials have begun research and stakeholder engagement work to ensure that the Scottish Government fully understands the impact of COVID-19 in schools and continues to support ongoing education recovery. This follows on from the actions and next steps publication in October 2021.