Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-20700

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 13 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many NHS staff currently make up the palliative care workforce, and what the figures were in each year since 2018, broken down by the number of (a) generalists and (b) specialists.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. The funding and commissioning of specialist and general palliative and end of life care services, including workforce planning and allocating resources for staffing, is a matter for Integration Joint Boards. A wide range of specialist and generalist staff in hospitals, care homes, primary care, social care, hospices and the third sector, will be involved in providing palliative care to people and their families.

Question reference: S6W-20702

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 13 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of (i) specialist and (ii) generalist social care workforces to deliver palliative care to rural and remote areas.

An underlying principle of the new National Strategy for Palliative and End of Life Care for Scotland being developed will be equitable and timely access to palliative care as needed, by each person of any age, living with any illness, in all places.

The Strategy Steering Group has established a number of working groups to address priorities, including a Workforce, Education, Training and Resources Working Group, to support the workforce and ensure care is delivered by a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency workforce that is trained, skilled, valued and supported.

Question reference: S6W-20701

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 13 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to ensure that people in rural and remote communities know what palliative care is and how to access it.

We are currently developing a new Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy with an overarching aim that everyone in Scotland receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care around death and bereavement support based on their needs and preferences.

We are currently reviewing what we know about people’s understanding and experience of palliative care, including in rural and remote communities, which will inform a public health approach to improving understanding of, and access to, palliative care. A Public Health Palliative Care Working Group has been set up to develop and take forward key actions in relation to this.

Question reference: S6W-20699

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 13 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what is being done to address any access challenges in delivering palliative care to rural and remote areas.

An underlying principle of the new National Strategy for Palliative and End of Life Care for Scotland will be equitable and timely access to palliative care as needed by each person of any age, living with any illness, in all places.

As part of this work we are reviewing the information and evidence we have, and need, to develop the strategy. This includes gathering data on current and projected needs for palliative care at a population level, mapping services and support across Scotland, and building on our understanding of people’s experiences of palliative and end of life care.

The outputs of this work will give us a clearer picture of the delivery and accessibility of palliative care across Scotland, including in remote and rural areas, and will allow us to develop evidence-based actions to ensure that people have equitable access to general and specialist palliative care if and when they need it, regardless of where they live.

Question reference: S6T-01524

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 11 September 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 12 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to keep people safe, in light of reported concerns about the spread of new variants of COVID-19.

Question reference: S6W-20619

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide additional funding to chronic pain services, in light of the reported closure of pain relief clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting increase in waiting times for appointments.

The 2023-24 Scottish Budget delivers record funding of £19 billion including increases in funding for community and primary care health services such as GP practices where the vast majority of people with chronic pain seek support. Detail on how funding has been used specifically for the assessment and treatment of chronic pain would require to be requested from NHS Boards. NHS Boards and healthcare professionals locally have responsibility for both service delivery and people’s care.

After being temporarily paused in March 2020, chronic pain services started to resume in September 2021 as part of the planned remobilisation of services. Referrals are now back to pre-pandemic levels and we’re working with all health boards to understand the challenges and improvement opportunities to address longer waiting times as boards deal with extremely challenging circumstances.

Question reference: S6W-20620

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much was spent on the Pain Management Task Force and its subsidiary committees in 2021-22, and what the money was spent on.

Question reference: S6W-20617

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 11 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much is budgeted for the work of the Pain Management Task Force in 2023-24, and what the money has been allocated to be spent on.

Question reference: S6O-02500

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 06 September 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 13 September 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to urgently address the reported maintenance backlog in GP practices.

Question reference: S6W-20852

Asked by: Jackie Baillie, MSP for Dumbarton, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 25 August 2023
Current Status: Answered by Elena Whitham on 31 August 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding was provided to each of the 31 alcohol and drug partnerships in each financial year from 2019-20 to 2023-24.

Funding provided to each Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) for 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 is available at: Alcohol and Drug Partnerships: funding allocations - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government’s direct, recurring funding to support ADP projects is transferred to NHS Boards via their baseline allocations for onward delegation to Integration Authorities (IAs) to be invested, in their entirety, through ADPs. Where there is more than one IA, the level of funding is agreed jointly by the IAs within the Health Board area. Scottish Government provides details of what the ADP allocation of this funding would be using the NRAC formula as an indication of funding at the ADP level. However, precise allocations are a matter for Integration Authorities as the information requested is not held centrally.

Programme funding to ADPs is also transferred via NHS Boards, however, Scottish Government provide the level of funding for each IA that the Board delegates.

Funding transferred in 2022-23 is shown in Table 1. In 2022-23, a total of £106.8m was available to Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships – up on the previous year.

Due to a significant increase in reserves carried forward from previous years, ADPs utilised unspent reserves in 2022-23. ADP funding requirements were fully met in 2022-23, through the use of both unspent reserves and in year funding allocation.

Table 1: Funding transferred to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) for financial year 2022-23

NHS Board Name	HSCP Name	Programme Funding Transferred	NHS Board Baseline contribution	Total Funding Transferred
Ayrshire & Arran	East Ayrshire HSCP	£535,000	£1,349,987	£1,884,987
	North Ayrshire HSCP	£826,078	£1,533,565	£2,359,643
	South Ayrshire HSCP	£1,154,689	£1,282,913	£2,437,602
	NHS Ayrshire & Arran (programme management)	£67,000		£67,000
Borders	Scottish Borders HSCP	£715,639	£1,201,071	£1,916,710
Dumfries & Galloway	Dumfries and Galloway HSCP	£1,425,667	£1,690,165	£3,115,832
Fife	Fife HSCP	£3,297,868	£3,848,534	£7,146,402
Forth Valley	Clackmannanshire and Stirling HSCP	£861,934	£1,449,271	£2,311,205
Forth Valley	Falkirk HSCP	£666,900	£1,626,858	£2,293,758
Grampian	Aberdeen City HSCP	£159,000	£2,153,676	£2,312,676
	Aberdeenshire HSCP	£2,017,754	£2,378,721	£4,396,475
	Moray HSCP	£678,291	£968,613	£1,646,904
Greater Glasgow & Clyde	East Dunbartonshire HSCP	£880,459	£1,047,418	£1,927,877
	East Renfrewshire HSCP	£747,361	£898,962	£1,646,323
	Glasgow City HSCP	£2,234,918	£6,739,656	£8,974,574
	Inverclyde HSCP	£916,038	£921,201	£1,837,239
	Renfrewshire HSCP	£141,000	£1,918,939	£2,059,939
	West Dunbartonshire HSCP	£611,000	£1,021,676	£1,632,676
	NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (programme management)	£132,000		£132,000
Highland	Argyll and Bute HSCP	£703,253	£1,074,381	£1,777,634
Highland	Highland HSCP	£2,217,072	£2,649,567	£4,866,639
Lanarkshire	North Lanarkshire HSCP	£2,796,714	£3,583,140	£6,379,854
Lanarkshire	South Lanarkshire HSCP	£2,456,894	£3,345,404	£5,802,298
Lothian	East Lothian HSCP	£349,402	£1,050,084	£1,399,486
	Edinburgh HSCP	£1,821,000	£4,726,576	£6,547,576
	Midlothian HSCP	£338,133	£909,677	£1,247,810
	West Lothian HSCP	£993,996	£1,770,988	£2,764,984
	NHS Lothian (Programme management)	£132,000		£132,000
Orkney	Orkney Islands HSCP	£69,000	£283,193	£352,193
Shetland	Shetland Islands HSCP	£67,000	£275,919	£342,919
Tayside	Angus HSCP	£415,854	£1,220,457	£1,636,311
	Dundee City HSCP	£914,013	£1,636,913	£2,550,926
	Perth and Kinross HSCP	£1,354,811	£1,554,838	£2,909,649
	NHS Tayside (programme management)	£66,000		£66,000
Western Isles	Western Isles HSCP	£0	£377,637	£377,637
Total		£32,763,737	£56,490,000	£89,253,737

In 2023-24, a total of £112.9m is available to Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships – an increase on 2022-23. Funding transferred in tranche 1, as at 31 st August 2023 in financial year 2023-24 is shown in Table 2. The second tranche will be allocated later in 2023 and will reflect the forecast spend for the remainder of the financial year.

Table 2: Funding transferred to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) to date for financial year 2023-24

NHS Board Name	HSCP Name	HSCP Total Programme Funding Transferred	Agenda for Change Uplift	NHS Board Baseline contribution	Health Board Total transferred
Ayrshire & Arran	East Ayrshire HSCP	£944,716	£257,000	£3,789,617	£7,073,741
	North Ayrshire HSCP	£1,067,056
	South Ayrshire HSCP	£968,452
	NHS Ayrshire & Arran (programme management)	£46,900
Borders	Scottish Borders HSCP	£826,129	£134,000	£1,124,102	£2,084,231
Dumfries & Galloway	Dumfries and Galloway HSCP	£1,147,696	£116,000	£1,640,586	£2,904,282
Fife	Fife HSCP	£2,655,958	£301,000	£3,531,931	£6,488,889
Forth Valley	Clackmannanshire and Stirling HSCP	£1,016,305	£283,000	£2,841,957	£5,266,033
Forth Valley	Falkirk HSCP	£1,124,772	£283,000	£2,841,957	£5,266,033
Grampian	Aberdeen City HSCP	£1,582,909	£779,000	£4,831,740	£9,508,165
	Aberdeenshire HSCP	£1,662,131
	Moray HSCP	£652,385
Greater Glasgow & Clyde	East Dunbartonshire HSCP	£717,478	£1,218,000	£15,507,311	£25,823,773
	East Renfrewshire HSCP	£639,336
	Glasgow City HSCP	£4,887,260
	Inverclyde HSCP	£701,392
	Renfrewshire HSCP	£1,361,492
	West Dunbartonshire HSCP	£699,103
	NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde (programme management)	£92,400
Highland	Argyll and Bute HSCP	£722,919	£100,000	£3,049,625	£5,679,738
Highland	Highland HSCP	£1,807,194	£100,000	£3,049,625	£5,679,738
Lanarkshire	North Lanarkshire HSCP	£2,507,543	£107,000	£5,810,158	£10,784,994
Lanarkshire	South Lanarkshire HSCP	£2,360,293	£107,000	£5,810,158	£10,784,994
Lothian	East Lothian HSCP	£901,529	£999,000	£9,518,120	£16,592,319
	Edinburgh HSCP	£3,349,297
	Midlothian HSCP	£537,285
	West Lothian HSCP	£1,194,688
	NHS Lothian (Programme management)	£92,400
Orkney	Orkney Islands HSCP	£187,874	£10,000	£457,364	£655,238
Shetland	Shetland Islands HSCP	£185,406	£82,000	£495,017	£762,423
Tayside	Angus HSCP	£834,764	£615,000	£4,453,918	£8,499,201
	Dundee City HSCP	£1,456,965
	Perth and Kinross HSCP	£1,092,355
	NHS Tayside (programme management)	£46,200
Western Isles	Western Isles HSCP	£249,060	£18,000	£568,350	£835,410
Total		£40,319,643	£5,019,000	£57,619,796	£102,958,439

Seòmar agus comataidhean