There are currently no vacancies.

The list of current Whistleblowing Champions for each board can be accessed via this link: Public appointments - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

I have asked Janet Egdell, Chief Executive of NRS to respond. Her response is that the National Records of Scotland (NRS) are responsible for the Scottish Register of Tartans website.

NRS remains committed to maintaining a website to support the Scottish Register of Tartans. There are no current plans to update the user interface of the Scottish Register of Tartans website.

NRS are focused on the launch of the refreshed Scotland’s People website during September 2024 and work will then follow to consider all website provision.

It is disappointing that the infant mortality rate rose last year. We are involved in a number of initiatives to help improve perinatal and infant outcomes.

The established Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) perinatal and paediatric improvement programmes are currently supporting NHS Boards to improve outcomes for families through two ongoing collaboratives. One of the key aims of the SPSP Perinatal collaborative is to reduce neonatal morbidity and mortality. The SPSP paediatric collaborative launched in September 2023 and aims to improve the recognition and response to clinical deterioration in babies, children and young people.

Additionally, since October 2021 a National Hub has been in place to review and learn from the deaths of babies, children, and young people in Scotland. Commissioned and funded by Scottish Government, the National Hub is jointly hosted by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate. A principal aim of the National Hub is to channel the learning from child death reviews to inform change and improvement and ultimately help reduce future preventable child deaths.

The Review of Maternity and Neonatal Services was led by a review group consisting of representatives from the key professional groups involved in managing and delivering maternity and neonatal services, representatives of the Scottish Government, staff side organisations, Royal Colleges, third sector representatives and academics working in maternal and infant health research.

The full membership of the Review group can be found in Appendix E of The Best Start: A Five Year Forward Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Care in Scotland, and membership of Sub Groups and their remit in Appendix F.

The rate of stillbirth in Scotland has dropped from 5.7 stillbirths per 1000 births (live and still) in 2003 to 3.7 per 1000 births (live and still) in 2023, what this means is that 125 fewer babies were stillborn in 2023 than 2003. However, we recognise that there is still more work to do to improve stillbirth rates, and the Scottish Government is committed to participating and funding key initiatives to reduce the incidence of stillbirth in Scotland.

The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) perinatal improvement programme, established in 2013 has the specific aim of reducing stillbirth. Scotland continues to fund and participate in UK-wide audits including Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries – UK (MBRRACE-UK), which undertakes surveillance on stillbirth and makes recommendations for improvement, which we consider carefully with an expectation NHS Boards will review their local data and act on emerging themes. We also expect all Boards to use the Perinatal Mortality Review Tool to review all perinatal deaths in a systematic and consistent way to ensure, where possible lessons are learned to improve care.

We provide NHS Boards with information leaflets for pregnant women which include advice on important ways to help reduce the risk of stillbirth, including side sleeping, not smoking and monitoring baby’s movements. This information is also set out in Ready Steady Baby, a comprehensive guide to pregnancy, labour and birth and given to pregnant women in the ante natal period.

The Scottish Government commissioned research to evaluate the current public awareness of Face, Arms, Speech, Time (FAST), stroke symptoms and risk factors, which has now been completed. The results of this research are informing our plans for future work.

Scottish Government, Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland and Stroke Association all support the continue used of FAST. The current evidence base does not support a move to the use of BE FAST, but we will regularly review this position based on the best available evidence.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care asked the Specialty Adviser to the Chief Medical Officer for Stroke to review stroke recognition education for clinical staff. This review has informed the development of an education package, funded by the Scottish Government, to be delivered to staff in GP practices, Emergency Departments and the Scottish Ambulance Service. Although focusing on FAST, this education will also cover the less common presentations of stroke.

The Scottish Government undertook and published an Equality Impacts Assessment and Fairer Scotland Duty Assessment, as part of the amendment regulations made as payment reform. Further detail can be found at:

Supporting documents - NHS dental payment reform: equality impact assessment record - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

A Health Inequalities Impact Assessment would not ordinarily form part of the policy process in Scottish Government.

Local recruitment is the responsibility of the Health Board with the Scottish Government providing support for workforce planning. Since December 2023, Scottish Government officials have met nursing leadership in all territorial Boards and all universities offering the post graduate health visiting course. These discussions included exploring recruitment and retention challenges and successes. Innovative recruitment and retention practices, identified as part of those discussions, will be shared across all Health Board partners.

Attraction and retention of people into nursing and midwifery more generally is a key part of the remit of the Nursing and Midwifery Taskforce. The Taskforce, chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, will recommend a workplan of actions to support workforce sustainability, workplace culture, practice, flexibility, recruitment and retention, alongside the diversification of training pathways.

Jenni Minto: Quantitative evaluation is ongoing through data analysis by Practitioner Services Division of NSS and is published by Public Health Scotland quarterly. This data can be found at the following link:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/nhs-dental-data-monitoring-report/nhs-dental-data-monitoring-report-quarter-ending-march-2024/

The Scottish Government has also introduced a revised system of Quality Improvement activity with a specific focus, in 2024-25, on qualitatively evaluating the impact of payment reform. Dental teams are required to undertake a team-based reflection activity to discuss their experience of the reform process in addition to the resultant changes they have made in their practices. This process has been to complement and enhance the qualitative information already collated through regular engagement with NHS Boards and Directors of Dentistry.

Jenni Minto: In September 2023, we published Mental Health Core Standards, initially applying to adult secondary mental health services. These general standards ensure high quality and safe mental health services. We are currently focusing on a phased implementation of the standards and there are no immediate plans to update them.