Chamber and committees

Decisions to discharge patients are not made by Ministers, they are made by health and social care professionals, alongside the patient and their family, or their legal representative where applicable.

As was the case before the pandemic, where someone is most appropriately cared for after discharge is based on a multi-disciplinary assessment of the individual’s needs and wishes. There are a range of factors that clinicians will consider as part of this assessment, including clinical readiness for discharge and the best setting for meeting the individual’s needs.

If an attorney is unhappy with the decision to discharge a patient they can raise a complaint against the person or organisation who has taken the decision, or apply for directions from the sheriff under section 3(3) of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000.

Public Health Scotland undertook an analysis of discharges to care homes and found that care home size is very strongly related to outbreaks. That is, the risk of a care home outbreak increased progressively as the size of care home increased. Furthermore, there was no clear statistical evidence that hospital discharges were associated with care home outbreaks. The analysis was published on 21 April 2021 and can be found here: Discharges from NHSScotland hospitals to care homes - Between 1 March and 31 May 2020 (revised) - Discharges from NHSScotland hospitals to care homes - Publications - Public Health Scotland

Court programming is a matter for the senior judiciary, supported by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS). SCTS have advised that jury trials resumed in Dumfries and Galloway on 19 April 2021, and since then the number of people cited for jury duty and excused on the grounds that they cannot reasonably travel to the Remote Jury Centre in Ayr is 128. During that period, no jury trials in Dumfries and Galloway were adjourned due to a lack of jurors.

The Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations (TUPE) apply when a service is transferred from one employer to another, in this case ‘insourcing’. It provides those who are carrying out work which will be provided by a new employer with protection by transferring them to the employment of the new provider. Staff transferring to SPS employment will be consulted on the changes that will be made when SPS are managing the prison. Exact costs will become clear at the conclusion of the consultation exercise and the running costs are likely to be aligned to an existing public prison of a similar size.

The Scottish Government is aware of the pressures impacting on all sectors.

The National Care Home Contract determines the rates paid for residential care by Local Authorities. This is negotiated annually by COSLA, Scottish Care and Scotland Excel, the Scottish Government is not a contractual party to this agreement. However we are aware that the cost of living crisis was discussed and an agreement was reached to recognise some of the pressures.

To support care homes to recruit and retain staff we have funded an increase in the minimum hourly rate for those providing direct Adult Social Care rose to £10.50 p/h. This represents an increase 12.9% for these workers in the course of a year.

Additionally by the end of this Parliament we will have budgeted over £800m of increased annual support for social care compared to current spending. We continue to provide NHS Boards and Integration Authorities with the funding they require to meet the cost of responding to the pandemic, which comes on top of the £1.7bn already provided to Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships in 2020-21.

The Scottish Government has delivered record investment into NHS dental services with a 9 per cent increase in the budget for NHS dental services in 2022-23.

From April, we have introduced revised payment arrangements which reward NHS dental teams according to their activity. Combined with the relaxation of infection, prevention and control measures, they are having a substantial positive impact in improving access and ensuring the sector is able to quickly return to more normal levels of activity and clear the backlog.

Further to the response provided to S5W-34970, since February 2021 Zero Waste Scotland has awarded tailored consultancy support to two SMEs through the Circular Economy Business Support Service in order to help develop circular textiles propositions. Each support service provided to these organisations had a value of approximately £10,000.

As set out in the 2021-22 Programme for Government, we plan to introduce a new £2 million Textile Innovation Fund in the first half of 2022 to support businesses working in this sector to address issues associated with textile waste and throwaway culture.

In the South Lanarkshire Local Authority (a) 5,525 clients received one or more payments for Scottish Child Payment between April 2021 and December 2021, and (b) 3,955 clients received one or more payments for Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods between April 2021 and February 2022.

These figures are based on secondary analysis of the most recently published statistics on Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods, published by Social Security Scotland. Whilst these include information by local authority area, we do not currently produce information by Scottish Parliament constituency.

Statistics on uncollected council tax are published in the annual "Council Tax Collection" National Statistics publication. The most recent edition is available at Local government finance statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) with the next update scheduled to be published on 21 June 2022.

The Council Tax Reduction Scheme means that nobody in Scotland has to meet a Council Tax Bill they cannot be expected to afford.

Council Tax is a local tax with responsibility for all elements of administration and collection resting with individual local authorities.

(a) Psychiatry

Table 1 sets out the number of established training places in each of the various psychiatric specialties. This data reflects trainee establishment levels from August 2016 – August 2022.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling gender inequality and embedding a human rights approach to tackling child poverty.

Our second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ , is underpinned by extensive impact assessments – informed by consultation with stakeholders and individuals with direct experience of poverty. This includes an Equality Impact Assessment presenting summary consideration across policies and proposals included with the Plan focusing on how policies may impact, either positively or negatively, on different sections of the population in different ways, through the lens of Protected Characteristics, which includes sex. The above along with our Evidence Review on What Works , Cumulative Impact Assessment , Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment , Fairer Scotland Duty Impact Assessment and Islands Impact Assessment , helped inform development of the Plan and will continue to guide its implementation and delivery.

As set out in ‘ Best Start, Bright Futures ’, we are committed to focusing on the impact of all interventions through the lens of our six priority families and will seek to ensure that systems work for these families in particular. This includes a substantive focus on lone parent households, the majority of whom are headed by women, and mothers under the age 25 both of which are at greatest risk of poverty and encapsulate many of the inequalities affecting women more broadly. This includes barriers relating to entering and sustaining employment, childcare, housing and transport.

Through this focused approach, we will be able to drive down levels of child poverty whilst delivering significant progress on our wider equality and human rights ambitions – particularly in relation to advancing equality and human rights for women, disabled people and minority ethnic people.

We are committed to continue to engage with our partners, including gender representative stakeholders and women with experience of poverty, to ensure an intersectional and gendered approach is embedded in the development, implementation and monitoring of the actions set out in the plan. This includes, for example, establishing a Lived Experience Panel in Summer 2022, with members from each of the six priority family groups, including young mothers and lone parents, to help inform our employability policy.