Chamber and committees

Public Health Scotland’s (PHS) most recent report confirmed that 461 statutory-funded placements were approved in the second half of the 2023-24 financial year alone, with 938 placements approved for the year overall. This indicates that we are already on track to meet our commitment of 1000 people accessing statutory-funded residential rehab in 2026 (an increase of 300%).

While the PHS statistics indicate welcome progress, we recognise the scale of the challenge that we continue to face and are determined to do more.

We are working with ADPs to aid the development of clear pathways into residential rehabilitation across the country, and the establishment of pathway development clusters by Healthcare Improvement Scotland has resulted in 29/30 ADPs publishing their pathways. This will help facilitate a further increase to statutory funded placements and support our aim of meeting the final target before the end of the National Mission in March 2026.

The Public Health Scotland interim monitoring report on statutory-funded residential rehabilitation placements does not gather data on the number of successfully completed rehabilitation placements.

We have responded to calls for more transparency and accountability commissioning Public Health Scotland to develop a National Core Minimum Dataset that will provide data not only on the number of publicly funded placements but also with time will publish insights on outcomes from placements in Residential Rehab.

This will provide the Scottish Government with a clear line of sight on how residential rehab funding is being spent across the country and help to further the evidence base for this treatment model.

We have responded to calls for more transparency and accountability by working with Public Health Scotland to track the number of residential rehab placements that ADPs have funded and the development of a National Core Minimum Dataset that will provide data not only on the number of publicly funded placements but also with time will publish insights on outcomes from placements in Residential Rehab.

This will provide the Scottish Government with a clear line of sight on how residential rehab funding is being spent across the country and help to further the evidence base for this treatment model.

The Scottish Government recognises that the cost of living crisis continues to place pressure on household budgets. However, previous industry research has shown that customers facing affordability issues can be found across all Council Tax bands. Therefore, at this time there are no plans to increase the Water Charges Reduction Scheme discount further as this would also have the effect of placing an additional burden on the general customer base who may also be struggling to afford water and sewerage charges.

The Water and Sewerage Services to Dwellings (Collection of Unmetered Charges by Local Authority) (Scotland) Order 2023 provides a mechanism for Scottish Water to pay Local Authorities for the costs of billing and collecting water and sewerage charges. The Scottish Government therefore has no requirement to hold the requested information.

The Scottish Government has not undertaken such an assessment.

The creation of the Counter Fraud Service (CFS) and the introduction of the Counter Fraud Toolkit is a significant step forward in the Scottish Government’s (SG) management of the risks to public resources posed by fraud and corruption. Both the CFS and toolkit exist within a broader range of policies, processes, guidance and support within SG that are concerned with the identification and mitigation of fraud and corruption risks. The CFS routinely collaborates with colleagues across SG and wider public bodies in this, including Internal Audit, Risk Control & Assurance Division, Security Division and Procurement on fraud and corruption risk management, and the response to incidents of alleged fraud that occur.

This approach aligns with current best practice in public sector counter fraud, and the CFS is engaged with external partners and colleagues from the UK Government Public Sector Fraud Authority, the International Public Sector Fraud Forum, Audit Scotland and the Scottish Public Sector Counter Fraud Network. This facilitates the sharing of expertise and current counter fraud practice, as well as horizon scanning on future risks of fraud and corruption, providing assurance on the management of fraud and corruption risk and the protection of public resources.

The funding provided by Scottish Government, since 2020 for the National Wellbeing Hub for health and social care staff is broken down as follows:

2020-2021: £57,000

2021-2022: £85,000

2022-2023: £87,000

2023-2024: £191,000

2024-2025: £96,000

Residential rehabilitation services in Scotland are regulated by appropriate governing bodies independent of the Scottish Government; namely the Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland or the NHS.

It is the responsibility of these bodies to monitor and ensure that residential rehabilitation services are providing safe, quality support to people in recovery across the country.

The Scottish Government entrusts these bodies to carry out this responsibility diligently, and in line with the qualified levels of clinical expertise that they provide.

The Scottish Government commissioned Scotland Excel to develop a National Commissioning Framework to support the procurement of residential rehabilitation placements. The Framework launched in April 2024 and includes a service specification as part of the contractual arrangement. This service specification was developed in conjunction with the regulators to ensure a minimum level of care provided by each provider on the framework.

We have responded to calls for more transparency and accountability by working with Public Health Scotland to track the number of residential rehab placements that have been funded using public money.

PHS and SG have worked collaboratively with stakeholders to establish a core minimum dataset to support the monitoring and evaluation of residential rehab. The first batch of returns for the dataset have now been received from most providers. It is expected that the first extracts from the dataset, including the number of publicly funded residential rehabilitation placements will be published in December 2024.

A greater level of insight and data will be available for publication, including average treatment length and associated outcomes, as the dataset continues to develop and become more mature.