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There has been a huge difference through some of the things that we have done in recent times. Again, it would be worth the committee’s while to talk to other organisations about what different interventions have meant in different places.

To give the committee an example, distress brief intervention work is happening in a number of parts of Scotland. It has been expanded and we will no doubt also roll that out further. If you talk to the folks working in that area, you can tell the difference that it can make. Let us take the police, for example. Pressure comes off them if they can get others in to help folk at time of need, rather than officers being tied up, often for long periods of time and often without having the skill set to deal with the difficulty that the person is facing at that point—although, let us be honest, most of our officers are pretty immense. Those things therefore make a huge difference.

Another example, although not quite so recent, is work that went on at the Victoria hospital in Fife as part of a joint partnership between Shelter, NHS Fife and the Scottish Government, which focused mainly on housing but also on dealing with mental health. Getting folk housed and getting them support took pressure off the accident and emergency department.

There are a lot of things going on and a lot of learning is happening. We have to consider what is working, what is working well and how we can export that elsewhere. The co-operation that exists in many places is beneficial for all those organisations, but the outcomes can be immense for individuals who are vulnerable and in a lot of distress.

There was a huge amount in that question. Ms Webber said that it is all buzzing about in her head, and I think that it is probably all buzzing about in our heads at the moment, as well.

I explained to the committee earlier the level of engagement that we have with partners around getting all of this right as we move forward. At the moment, we have a significant number of folk in hospital who should not be there, and it is best that they are not there. Some of the solutions will be interim ones, but the ambition is to get folk back to living independently, with support, if that is possible and as soon as we can.

Rather than going on about all of the possibilities, we will write to the committee about what we are doing. We do not have some of the information that Ms Webber is asking for regarding people in interim situations. I will write back to the committee in more depth to explain how we are handling that.

Yes. Some of the thinking obviously has to be different in rural areas than it is in cities. Sometimes it is not so easy to plug a gap if there is illness in a remote rural place. Some places have considered having flying squads—which is their expression, not mine—so that they can deal with care at home in places where a gap has been created because of illness or whatever.

Many people are thinking out of the box around how we do our level best for folk, and that needs to continue. We need to continue to push that. What we require—some of the folk on the calls with me are probably sick fed up of me of saying this—is collaboration, co-operation and a lot of communication in order to get that right over the piece.

No—at the moment, I am not confident that everybody can access respite support. I should say that I want to get away from using the word “respite”; I prefer the phrase “short-term breaks”, which is a much better way of describing it. As somebody said to me, “respite” implies that care is seen as a burden, and we need to get away from that kind of thinking.

I want to ensure that, as we move forward, short-term breaks become a right, as they should. That is why the national care service consultation contained questions on that subject. I would be telling porkies if I said that, at this moment in time, everybody can access what is required, because I know that that is not the case.

I was talking to managers of carers centres only yesterday, and it is clear that there is a combination of things going on that add to the pressures. In some areas, day services have not fully opened up. That is sometimes down to space difficulties, or they have been in the same position in the past. We need to continue to open those centres up safely.

Equally, as was said to me yesterday, some carers are still afraid to send their loved ones to daycare services or on short-term breaks because they are still feart about the pandemic. As we move out of the pandemic, we will have a job of work in regaining folks’ trust and helping them to get back into their previous routine. That will take a while.

I cannot say that we are doing everything to meet those needs at this moment in time. However, as we move forward, we need to ensure that we do that, which is why that part of the national care service consultation is very important.

That is a question and a half. Introducing golden hellos, or golden handcuffs, is a very difficult thing to do, and it could end up creating more problems than it resolves. I will be honest with Ms Mackay and the committee. I am pretty pragmatic about many things, and I do not automatically shut doors on suggestions. We could look at that but, in some regards, I do not think that it is necessarily a solution.

I am sure that that will be the case, convener.

I am in your hands, as always, convener.

Third sector representation is better in some places than it is in others. On how we as a Government interact with the third sector, I speak to the third sector all the time, and it is represented on many of our strategic groups and bodies. With regard to health and social care partnerships in particular, it is fair to say that there is pretty good dialogue with, and representation of, the third sector in some of them—although that is without votes at the table—and not so much in others.

Yes. You have hit on a really good point. Some folks have seen some very traumatic scenes happen before their eyes. I have heard some pretty bleak stories as I have been doing the rounds and talking to folk. We must ensure that we do our level best for such people.

A number of folk have seen difficult situations, including deaths, in the past but, for many, the pandemic has been so much more than that. We must take cognisance of that and provide the wraparound support that is required.

In all this, I see it as being my job to ensure that we are doing our level best for everyone. I make no bones about the fact that I think that long waits are unacceptable. We, as a Government, remain committed to meeting the standard that 90 per cent of patients begin treatment within 18 weeks of referral.

I hope that folk will excuse me for this, but I will be a little bit parochial for a minute. When I was first elected to Parliament, CAMHS in Grampian were pretty poor, and I used to get a fair amount of correspondence in my mailbag and inbox about that. Those services have been transformed. Even during this very difficult pandemic, I have had no real complaints about CAMHS in Grampian. If you look at what has happened there during the pandemic, you will see that things have been pretty stable, given the circumstances. The transformation has made a real difference to service delivery. The service is much more community based and is, in some respects, less reliant on acute services.

Our ambition is to ensure that that change happens across the country. It would be fair to say that different health board areas are at different stages in making the change. I am concentrating on speaking to health boards that have not made the shift because, in order for us to meet need, we have to make the change. It is fair to say that quite a lot of my time has been spent challenging health boards about what they can do to make the change.

Some of what is needed might not be so easy to do at the moment, but some of it should be easy to do now, and would make things much better not only for patients, but for staff. Again, I would be more than happy to write to the committee about our ambitions and the standards that we have set. I would even be willing to go down to the level of saying whom I have been speaking to, if that is what you require.