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Thank you very much, colleagues.

I thank everyone who joined us last night. The session was very informative.

With our first panel, we will focus on the patient’s perspective on accessing primary care and navigating alternative pathways. That leads on very nicely from the summaries that we have just been given.

I welcome to the committee Val Costello, who is a patient adviser in the Citizens Advice Scotland patient advice and support service; Margaret McKay, who is the chair of Riverside medical practice patient participation group; and Hannah Tweed, who is a senior policy officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. I thank the alliance for being very helpful in getting people to our meeting last night.

To what extent have the public, and bodies such as yours, been involved in the co-design of primary care services, particularly given that the GP contract has changed and different strands of practitioner are now available in GP practices, and given everything else that we have talked about relating to the alternative pathways that people might be able to be referred to?

I call Sue Webber.

Perhaps we can get a GP perspective on this from Dr Yadav and Dr Williams.

I do not see any of our other panellists wanting to come in. If you want to come in, please let me know in the chat box. I will go back to Stephanie Callaghan for a follow-up question.

Do any of the other panellists want to come in on mental health support workers?

Thank you. Wendy—

Our second item is two evidence sessions as part of our inquiry into alternative pathways to primary care. They are the first of our sessions on that inquiry.

Before we start, I will mention an informal meeting that I was at last night with service users and some third sector representatives, who attended to talk about their experience of alternative pathways to primary care. I would be grateful if some of the members who attended could give a quick summary of what they heard.

Certainly, in the session that I chaired, there was a lot of enthusiasm for green spaces therapies, but there was concern that not enough patients were being referred to them and that there was a lack of understanding of what was out there, including among referring general practitioners. There was a worry that, although there were quite a lot of really good projects out there, people who could benefit from them—particularly the most vulnerable of people, who could benefit the most from them—were not signposted to them or did not have access to the information in order to access them. In short, there are a lot of good things out there but there is an issue with communication.

We heard about some good things, but one person said that she had heard about some attitude problems, with medical professionals, in particular, being quite dismissive of social prescribing as an option. That was a bit of a worry. I do not know how widespread that attitude is, but that was certainly one person’s point of view. Emma—you were in another session.

That is a good point to end on. I thank all three of you for your time and for everything that you have told us. Both panels of witnesses have been excellent and have given us a lot to chew over.

At the next meeting on 15 March, the committee will continue taking evidence in our inquiry on alternative pathways or, as we should perhaps start calling them, just pathways to primary care. I am looking at Wendy Panton, because she made a good point about that at the start of the evidence session.

That concludes the public part of our meeting.

That is really interesting—particularly your points on training.

Paul O’Kane has some questions.

I do not know whether any other witness wants to come in. I should have mentioned at the outset that, if a member has directed their question to one person, that does not mean that everyone else is excluded. If you have something to say, please put an R in the chat box, and I will bring you in.

I will add something to the mix on top of Sandesh Gulhane’s questions. There was widespread national messaging on the GP contract and on the qualifications and expertise of the various health professionals, as Wendy Panton mentioned. There is also the issue of local information being provided about how a practice works, who is in the practice and what they can do. In the earlier session, our three witnesses all mentioned that the front-end system of a surgery can often add to people’s frustrations, particularly if they are put in a queue. In my area, some surgeries have systems in which, after a certain period of time, the line goes dead.

I want to throw that into the mix. How can things be done better locally in relation to proactively speaking to patients or changing the front-end systems? What capacity exists to alleviate the frustrations and improve knowledge?

Wendy, you have been nodding away while I have been speaking, so I will come to you first. You will not do that again. [Laughter.]