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There is a lack of data on the wider outcomes—including on employment and health—for people who have been through the justice system. There is also a lack of data to enable Community Justice Scotland to assess how much progress community justice partnerships are making towards national outcomes. Why has Community Justice Scotland been unable to effectively assess how much progress has been made against national community justice outcomes?

What work have the Scottish Government and other stakeholders done to examine whether the wider outcomes such as health or future employment have been achieved?

I just want to ensure that, wherever we focus the money, we are getting the outcomes that we want.

That brings me to my last question. We understand that the Scottish Government is undertaking workforce planning to secure a permanent and sustainable vaccination workforce. Do you know how far advanced those plans are? What must the Scottish Government consider in that planning?

As has been mentioned, the Scottish Ambulance Service was drafted in to support the delivery of the vaccination programme. Is that still happening? That service is, as we know, under pressure, too. Have those staff been moved back, or are they still helping out?

The Auditor General’s briefing states that Audit Scotland’s 2012 report “Reducing Reoffending in Scotland” said that a lack of data made it difficult to assess the impact of community justice authorities. The issue was also mentioned in the outcomes, performance and improvement framework report of 2016, and our predecessor committee mentioned the issue in its 2019 report on key audit themes. The committee raised significant concerns about a recurring key audit theme of incomplete and poor-quality data.

I take on board your point about the multi-agency and complex nature of the issue and the fact that a review is under way, but how and when will the data issues identified in the Auditor General’s briefing be addressed? We do not want to have another report from the Auditor General that again states that there is incomplete data. The first report that I mentioned goes back to 2012, which was nine years ago.

I will direct the first question to Mr Boyle, the Auditor General. Audit Scotland’s blog presents quite a bleak picture of performance in terms of access to child and adolescent mental health services, particularly given the significant investment that has been made. The blog says:

“But the picture today is similar to 2018, despite significant investment.”

Do we have any idea of the extent of the funding and whether we can track that spend against outcomes?

The Audit Scotland blog refers to a task force that was set up by the Scottish Government and COSLA in 2018, which concluded that earlier guidance and support was required for GPs, health visitors, school nurses and others. What guidance and support exists for those professions in 2021? What changes have been made?

That question is directed, in the first instance, at Dr Morton, after which Mr McKay from Unison might want to come in and anyone else who would like to comment.

The session 5 committee stated that the absence of basic data was a concern. I will read out some of the comments in that committee’s 2019 report on children and young people’s mental health. In relation to spending on CAMHS, the then Auditor General said that

“the numbers are so variable as not to be credible”.

Audit Scotland said:

“We saw gaps and problems throughout the system in terms of how the money is accounted for and, critically, in terms of what difference any of it makes to children. We have made a series of recommendations in the report that those things need to be sharpened.”

It also said:

“we understand that boards will choose which ones they want to measure, and that will make benchmarking very difficult.”

There is a common theme here.

In her response to that report, the then Minister for Mental Health outlined work that the Scottish Government was progressing with NHS National Services Scotland to improve the quality and scope of the available data. Considering that the report is now two years old, to what extent has the work been progressed?

Your comments are quite concerning, because they are the same as the comments that I have just read in the report that was published in 2018. That is why we are trying to look at where the money is going and whether we can measure what the outcomes are.

Mr McKay, would you like to comment?