Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is great. I want to touch on something that Karen Reynolds said earlier about people’s expectations for the end of the journey. For the Parliament, the aim of a lot of these pieces of work is to reduce the number of drug deaths, but, from your service users’ point of view, what are the other measures of success that we should be looking at? After all, what one of your service users might consider a success might not be something that we have picked up on in different threads of our work. If we are missing something, or if there is a piece of success that we should be measuring from your service users’ point of view, what would that be?

Earlier, Natalie Don touched on the family approach. Although I totally welcome that approach, there might be various reasons why people do not have their immediate family involved in their recovery. Their immediate family might be the source of trauma or they might be estranged from their family for various reasons. Do you have plans to issue guidance around that, to make sure that, whatever that family set-up is—whether it is a biological family set-up or friends that someone treats as family—that support network is around that person and is involved in their treatment?

Lovely—thank you.

It is on a slightly different topic, and is on behalf of my colleague Maggie Chapman, who is looking for an update on the implementation of the Dundee drugs commission. What progress is being made on the recommendations of that commission?

I will be first every time to stand up and say that those are good careers and that that is not the reality in every single department in every single hospital. However, I think that when staff are telling us about the conditions we must address them and ensure that workplaces are supportive for absolutely everyone.

For my supplementary, I want to go back to Cathie Cowan, given that NHS Forth Valley was escalated on the basis of its culture. I spoke to a number of staff members before escalation; they all told me that senior management were remote from the workforce and were rarely seen. When five respiratory consultants resigned, they all cited the toxic culture as a reason. Since the escalation, psychological therapy staff have been in touch and have said that because of the two-year waits they are so worried about patients that they are working unpaid hours. What is being done to acknowledge the culture that staff have been working under, and how will the situation be sorted? We seem to be talking about three or four departments in NHS Forth Valley alone.

My question on this theme has been adequately covered so, in the interest of time, you can move on, convener.

According to the submissions, all the boards that are represented have been escalated to higher levels of the framework, and they all have higher turnover than the national average. Is the high level of turnover linked to poor culture in your board areas?

Everyone else will talk about buildings and things like that, but I want to talk about the social infrastructure that we need for people to be able to have time to be active. That relates to Kate Joester’s point that, if a person is trying to drop kids off at school, do the shopping and come back, when will they actually have time to take a meaningful walk, go for a cycle or participate in a class in a local authority setting.

Not everybody might have an answer from their working experience, but I wonder whether anyone can reflect on what changes we need to make. For example, the Green Party is a big advocate of the four-day working week, which would allow people more time to focus on things that are important to them. We also need to look at caring time. Does anyone have thoughts on the social infrastructure that we need to facilitate women and girls having time to take care of themselves?

Just a small one for a Tuesday morning.

For context, I point out that it was just in the past 24 hours that the psychological therapy staff member to whom I referred was in touch about staff having to work unpaid hours because they are so concerned about patients.

I am slightly concerned about what we will do until the new staff who have been recruited are actually in post, given the lag that often comes with recruitment. I think that your submission mentioned 12 weeks, in that regard.

Obviously, among the other barriers for women coming out of university is when they go into a working environment and have to establish new routines, as is the case when they go into a different working environment and must establish a new routine. Everyone at the table would probably say that our current employment is definitely a barrier to our getting out and getting active. Would four-day weeks, flexible working and things like that provide more space to mothers, women with caring responsibilities and those of us who are just plan busy, in order that we could get out and prioritise our health a bit more?