Seòmar agus comataidhean

In response to your query regarding the Scottish Government’s spend on unconscious bias training, our records show that centrally the Scottish Government has not spent any budget on unconscious bias training using external businesses and organisations. However, Scottish Government staff have been required to complete mandatory diversity and inclusion training since 2021. Unconscious bias is referenced in this training. The training was developed in partnership with Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion (ENEI) and the total cost of development was £33,900.

The Scottish Government continues to invest in our Detect Cancer Earlier (DCE) Programme, of which public education and empowerment is a key work-stream. We launched a new campaign – Be the Early Bird – in March 2023 to empower those with possible symptoms to act early. To coincide with this, a roadshow visited areas of deprivation across Scotland to further improve symptom awareness and encourage prompt action.

We will continue to work with the Scottish Cancer Coalition, as well as the primary care community, to raise awareness of symptoms of possible cancers, including ovarian. Work is also underway to redesign DCE’s website ( Get Checked Early ) and symptom checker, which includes signposting to Target Ovarian Cancer, a charity providing support to those affected by ovarian cancer.

The Scottish Government recognises the need to improve education around cervical screening and what it involves. We worked with Public Health Scotland (PHS) to develop a stakeholder toolkit to promote Cervical Cancer Prevention Week across partner channels earlier this year. We have also awarded £456,000 to Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust in support of their important campaign work on screening benefits including increasing awareness of how cervical screening works. Cervical Screening Awareness Week is also later this month and provides another opportunity for us to work in collaboration with partners to further increase awareness of the benefits of cervical screening.

Our Respiratory Care Action Plan published in March 2021, contains a key commitment to ensure that people living with respiratory conditions have access to the tools, resources, and information that they need to support them to self-manage their own condition.

Work is already established across Scotland to support the remote monitoring of conditions from home through our investment in the Connect Me programme. National pathways for conditions such as asthma and pulmonary disease are in development to be made available for use by Health Boards which will support early intervention and prevention of hospital admissions. All Health Boards in Scotland are expected to be working with the national programme by September 2023 and have been supported with provision of pulse-oximeters where requested.

We continue to assess the evidence for COPD developments which currently demonstrate sufficient potential to continue researching but insufficient evidence to justify a national roll out. While early indications are positive, evidence to support its potential benefits and applicability for national support are still to be demonstrated.

The National Optimal Lung Cancer Diagnostic Pathway provides boards with best practice examples to improve lung cancer diagnostic pathway efficiency. Adoption of the optimal diagnostic pathway will take time as boards begin to redesign their services, funding has been aligned to this work to help support boards implement diagnostic pathway improvements over time. Not all patients that move through diagnostic pathways will have cancer, however data form Public Health Scotland shows that we continue to treat around 1,000 lung cancer patients in NHS Scotland on average each quarter. Data on the number of lung cancers treated in Jan - March 2023 will be published by PHS on 27 June 2023.

The Scottish Breast Screening programme was temporarily paused between March 2020 – August 2020 in order to reduce the risk of participants becoming infected with Covid-19, to enable physical distancing, and to minimise the impact on essential NHS services as they responded to the virus. When screening resumed, a continued pause on self-referrals allowed appointments to be prioritised for those aged 50-70 years old, the recommended screening population. A phased restart of self-referrals was agreed on October 2022. Following this, women aged 71-74, and those over 75 with a history of breast cancer, have been eligible to self-refer for a screening appointment since November 2020.

Table 1 below shows the number of women who self-referred in each of the last three reporting years that run from 1 April to 31 March.

Table 1 shows the number of self-referrals from April 2020 - March 2023

There are no plans to expand eligibility of The Young Patients Family Fund at this time.

With respect to what further support is needed to support young cancer patients and their families, I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-11449 on
‎ 4 November 2022.

In addition to support available under the Young Patients Family Fund, financial support for travel to hospital is available via the patient travel expenses reimbursement schemes. Under those schemes, patients and authorised escorts can reclaim reasonable costs of travel associated with attending a hospital appointment, in line with eligibility criteria and medical requirements.

Where travel outside Scotland is necessary, Boards are expected to support patients to identify and access support available, taking account individual circumstances and ensuring patient care is at the centre of all decisions.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We will publish our Stroke Improvement Plan on 14 June 2023. Funding to drive forward the actions in the plan has been confirmed for 2023-24 with some of the implementation work already underway.

Delivery of the actions contained within this plan will enable us to minimise preventable strokes and to ensure timely and equitable access to life-saving treatment and a person centred, holistic approach to care that supports rehabilitation.

The Scottish Government’s Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy is being developed with an overarching aim that everyone in Scotland receives well-coordinated, timely and high-quality palliative care, care around death and bereavement support, based on their needs and preferences.

We will develop a strategy that reflects what matters to people experiencing serious illness or who are near the end of life. We are reviewing the information and evidence we have about people’s experiences of palliative and end of life care to inform our strategy going forward. This will include the values, preferences, and priorities of people facing additional risks and challenges, including prisoners.

The Scottish Government published the Scottish Strategy for Autism in 2011. This was a 10 year strategy which ran until 2021.

In March 2021, we published our Towards Transformation Plan as a follow-on to the Scottish Strategy for Autism and the Keys to Life Learning Disability Strategy. The Plan seeks to shape supports, services and attitudes to ensure that the human rights of autistic people and people with learning/intellectual disabilities are respected and protected and that they are empowered to live their lives, the same as everyone else.

We continue to work on delivering the action in our Towards Transformation Plan and also, are currently consulting on proposals for a Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodiversity Bill which will inform future strategies for neurodivergent communities, including autistic people.

In 2019 there were 23,584 adults with learning disability known to local authorities across Scotland, 956 (4.1%) were in employment, 10,483 (44.4%) were not in employment and 12,145 (51.5%) did not have their employment status recorded. Learning-Disability-Statistics-Scotland-2019.pdf (scld.org.uk)

The ONS Annual Population Survey (APS) is the official source for measuring the number of people in employment. Estimates for the number of people with a severe or specific learning difficulty (lasting 12 months or more) who are employed can also be obtained from the APS. Learning disabilities are included in the health problem severe and specific learning difficulty. In 2022, it was estimated that there were 13,100 people aged 16 and over who reported having a severe or specific learning difficulty and were in employment.