Chamber and committees

Perinatal and infant mental health is a key priority for the Scottish Government and the continued development and implementation of perinatal and infant mental health services across all sectors will continue to be supported. A Delivery/Implementation Group is currently being planned to build upon the successes of the Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board from April 2023.

The Third Sector play a key role in access to perinatal mental health support and has been pivotal in delivering the programme to date, including as members of the Programme Board. Third Sector organisations will continue to play a key role in the next iteration of the strategic oversight of perinatal and infant mental health across Scotland.

The number of properties expected to be liable for the Intermediate Property Rate (IPR) in 2023-24 before any reliefs are applied is presented in the below tables, broken down in Table 1 by property class, and in Table 2 by local authority. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property, and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property. The Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors.

These tables are based on an imputed Valuation Roll based on an incomplete draft Valuation Roll, as used by the Scottish Fiscal Commission in Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts December 2022, and figures are therefore subject to change.

Figures in these tables are rounded to the nearest 10, with values greater than zero but lower than five displayed as ‘[low]’.

Table 1: Number of properties liable for IPR in 2023-24 by property class

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13304 on
‎ 5 January 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

The National Trauma Training Programme (NTTP) consists of a range of training resources, including a framework which details the knowledge and skills required at each of the four practice levels. This Framework was created in part to enable organisations to deliver their own training or identify suitable training providers. As such, there will be a wide range of NTTP-aligned training that has been delivered to many members of the workforce that we do not hold central information about.

Training delivered by NES (NHS Education for Scotland) central team and the Transforming Psychological Trauma Implementation Coordinators (TPTICs) is recorded. Two different processes are used for monitoring and recording information about numbers accessing training, as set out below:

1) Monitoring and recording processes for face-to-face or screen-to-screen training across all four levels (informed, skilled, enhanced and specialist levels)

All information about face-to-face and screen-to-screen training at any level delivered by TPTICs and the central team is recorded by the TPTIC or central team member via an MS form. This includes information about the type and level of training, by whom and where it was delivered, duration, the number of people attending and their area of work. Because of the multi-agency focus of the NTTP, many of the training sessions bring together professionals working across various organisations and agencies. Reporting focuses on broader numbers and areas of work of attendees (whether justice, health, education, etc.), rather than by organisation, and as such does not differentiate between NHS and other public sector workers.

This information is collated centrally, and numbers of staff trained at each of the four levels are reported quarterly for performance tracking purposes.

2) Monitoring and recording of delivery of online training resources across Informed and skilled levels.

Informed (Level 1)

At the Informed level, the use of NTTP animations Opening Doors and Sowing Seeds, and the recorded workshops that accompany them are monitored through the number of views as indicated on the Vimeo platform. The numbers of views of the animations and workshops, and registrations for the workshops notes and tools are measured on a monthly basis.

This information is collated centrally, and numbers of staff accessing each of the informed training resources are reported quarterly for performance tracking purposes.

A key focus of developing the informed, online resources has been on making them easy to access. The animations and recorded workshops are freely available, meaning people accessing them do not need to supply their email address or employer. Likewise, the training resource for the Informed level will have been shown at in-person/online events, and uploaded to/ watched through various platforms, so it is not possible to capture exact numbers and details as to who has accessed this resource and whether they work for the NHS, another public sector organisation or elsewhere.

Skilled (Level 2)

Four modules to support Skilled practice training are provided on NHS Education for Scotland's Turas platform. To access these modules, it is necessary to have a Turas account.

The number of staff completing each of the four skilled workshops is collected from the Turas system on a monthly basis. This information is collated centrally, and numbers of staff completing each of the skilled modules are reported quarterly for performance tracking purposes.

In addition, Turas can provide further information about registered users who have accessed the modules. Two data sources are used by NES to monitor who has a Turas account. First, any individual can register for Turas and upon registration, and they may provide details of their sector, professional role and organisation. Second, richer data is available for the majority of NHS Scotland staff where Turas draws data from workforce information systems – these provide an accurate and up to date information about job role, department and organisation.

Enhanced (Level 3) and Specialist (Level 4)

There are no online training resources at the Enhanced and Specialist level, as this is intensive skills-based training which is delivered face-to-face/screen-to-screen.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) has taken a number of steps to ensure all staff are aware of, informed about and trained in trauma-informed practice and principles. The organisation has:

1. Signed up to the National Trauma Training Programme’s (NTTP) Leadership Pledge of Support, demonstrating their commitment to:

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is the health body for the provision of evidence-based advice, guidance and standards for health and care professionals to provide safer, more effective care. HIS carry out their statutory duties according to the Operating Framework which is the primary accountability and governance document between Scottish Government and HIS – you can find the full Operating Framework at https://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/previous_resources/policy_and_strategy/sg_his_operating_framework.aspx

The Framework sets out the ongoing relationship between the Scottish Government and HIS, guidance on performance management (including the Annual Review process) and the lines of accountability from HIS to the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the public.

In addition, HIS are taking a number of steps towards becoming a trauma-informed organisation. For further detail, I refer the member to the answer to question

The Bathing Waters (Scotland) Regulations 2008 enable Scottish Ministers to designate a bathing season in a period where they expect a large number of people to bathe at a designated bathing water. The definition of bathers, in this instance, is exclusive to paddlers and swimmers and does not cover other water users.

For all 87 designated bathing waters in Scotland the bathing season runs from 1 June to 15 September each year, in accordance with the traditional period of peak usage. In comparison with the 3.5 month bathing season in Scotland across Europe the season length varies from 2 months in Sweden to 6 months in Cypress.

The aim of the Bathing Waters Regulations is to minimise the risks to human health to swimmers and paddlers from bacteriological impacts whilst bathing. It would be disproportionately costly to monitor bathing waters outwith the current bathing water season when they are not regularly used by large numbers of bathers. General health advice on wild swimming is available from the UK Health Security Agency at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/swim-healthy-leaflet/swim-healthy , which is also applicable to Scotland

The number of bathing waters in Scotland has increased since last year and now stands at 87, with 98% achieving the bathing water quality standards and more rated excellent than ever before.

The Scottish Government aims to answer all ministerial correspondence within 20 working days and regularly reviews and monitors its performance against this target.

Correspondence from MSPs; councillors; third sector organisations and other key stakeholders; or the wider public is not categorised separately, therefore, calculating the percentage of responses sent within 20 working days to MSPs specifically could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. Between December 2021 and December 2022, the response rate for all ministerial correspondence was approximately 77% (of 43,091 items of ministerial correspondence, 33,173 were responded to within 20 working days).

On Scotland’s national forests and land, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) constructs roads for use on a multi-purpose basis e.g. timber transport, tree planting, environmental improvement works, recreational access. FLS does not hold data that ascribes a particular use to sections of forest road, nor does it hold specific data as to what lengths of road have been constructed by windfarm developers. Over the past ten years, levels of forest road construction by FLS have been as follows:

2012: 46 Miles

2013: 52 Miles

2014: 43 Miles

2015: 34 Miles

2016: 37 Miles

2017: 37 Miles

2018: 44 Miles

2019: 32 Miles

2020: 27 Miles

2021: 24 Miles

2022: 22 Miles

This data is not centrally available; aggregated data for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Waiting Times is sent to PHS from each NHS Board. It does not contain any information specifically on the number of young people removed from waiting lists, it reports on the number of referrals for young people to services, numbers waiting to start treatment and total waiting, and then numbers for those who started treatment and those who’s referral was rejected / not accepted (with both outcomes resulting in them being removed from the waiting list).

Table 1 shows the number of young people that started treatment – i.e. resulting in them being removed from waiting lists - and Table 2 shows the number that were not accepted for treatment therefore removed from waiting lists. The figures are presented by NHS Board of Treatment and relate to the financial years 2014-15 to 2021-22.

Data from 2012 has been published on the Information Services Division website, but data prior to 2014 is from a period when the aggregate dataset in development and is not regarded as reliable compared to more recently collected data. All data presented in Tables 1 and 2 has been previously published, however the data presented has been newly extracted and analysed to take account of subsequent data resubmissions to provide the most accurate figures. Therefore figures below may differ slightly to previously published figures for some years.

Table 1: People who started treatment in CAMHS from April 2014 to September 2022, by NHS Board of Treatment.