Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-12486

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the debate on chronic pain services on 16 November 2022, during which several members expressed support for NHS specialist chronic pain services being provided as a priority for patients requiring treatment following a referral from a clinician, whether it will clarify whether (a) specialist chronic pain services will be protected and (b) it will analyse relevant staffing levels, in order to decrease waiting times for these services.

The Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan was published in July 2022 and sets out the actions the Scottish Government are taking to improve care and services for people with chronic pain.

The Implementation Plan acknowledges the importance of specialist pain management services and includes a number of specific actions to improve access and quality of care provided by these services. This includes convening an expert working group to review pathways into specialist care and identify opportunities to share and promote best practice as well as piloting new digital pathways to improve how people access specialist services.

As part of this work it is expected that challenges around staffing of specialist services will also be explored. This activity will also be informed by a new national pain service managers network which will help to identify and prioritise key issues affecting the resilience and quality of specialist pain services, including workforce. In addition, the Scottish Government will publish, for the first time, projections of required workforce growth across health and social care as part of the National Workforce Strategy. Once generated these will be reviewed annually.

Question reference: S6W-12496

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 5 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what part infusions and injections will have in future plans to treat chronic pain.

I understand how important infusions and injections are for those patients receiving them, and that work is needed to improve care for people with chronic pain and the sustainability of our pain management services.

It is our intention that people can access safe, effective, evidence-based care and support. Therefore, as set out in the Framework for Pain Management Service Delivery – Implementation Plan which we published in July, we are taking action to develop a more consistent, nationally agreed approach to the provision of specialist medical interventions, such as infusions and injections.

This will take into account existing clinical evidence, the variation in approach between Health Boards and seek to reflect the views and needs of both the patient and clinical community.

Question reference: S6W-12395

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 21 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-05564 by John Swinney on 10 January 2017, whether it will provide an update on how many school support staff each local authority has employed in each year since 2010, broken down by category of employment.

Data on school support staff are collected as part of the annual school staff census.

National Statistics on selected categories of school support staff (pupil support assistants, home-school link workers, behaviour support staff, educational psychologists, school nurses and library staff) can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

Management information (which are not subject to the same quality assurance procedures by Scottish Government statisticians as Official Statistics) for all other support staff roles for which data is collected centrally can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-management-information/

Statistics for all categories of support staff prior to 2017 are available as part of the Teacher Census Supplementary Data: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

The processing and quality assurance of the statistics on school support staff from 2017 onwards has been brought into line with procedures for National Statistics on pupils and teachers. This means that statistics from 2017 onwards are not directly comparable with the data on support staff from previous years.

Question reference: S6O-01652

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 November 2022
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 7 December 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what steps are being taken to increase the allocation of police officers in Edinburgh.

Question reference: S6W-12196

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how much funding has been recovered in total by each local authority for homelessness prevention from payments made through Integration Joint Boards.

The majority of homelessness funding provided to local authorities is provided via the block grant, Scottish Government has provided £11.2 billion to Local Authorities as part of the block grant in 2022-23. It is at each local authority’s discretion as to how they use this resource to prevent and respond to homelessness. Decisions as to whether the responsibility for homelessness services are delegated to the local authority or the integration joint boards are made locally.

In addition to the block grant are specific allocations of funding for the purpose of addressing homelessness. Information on these additional funding allocations provided to local authorities can be found in the responses to parliamentary questions S6W-10127 on 22 August 2022 and S6W-06821 on 10 March 2022. 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

Question reference: S6W-12193

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how many new homes have been built in Scotland in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12192

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what information it has on how many modular homes have been built in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-12206

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any unmet need during the development of its proposals for a National Care Service.

Following the high level assessment of unmet need raised in the Independent Review of Adult Social Care, the Scottish Government considered unmet need in its consultation for the National Care Service.

Unmet need in adult social care is continually monitored as Scottish Government analysts are considering options for increasing our understanding of the nature and level of unmet need in adult social care. We will continue to engage with external partners and those with lived experience of unmet need in social care services as we develop the National Care Service.

Question reference: S6W-12204

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 16 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government how the assumptions in the Financial Memorandum for the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, which reportedly show that just 10% of adult carers will access short breaks and only 14% will use easy access support, were calculated.

Short Breaks

The Financial Memorandum estimate for the cost of personalised short breaks for adult carers under the Carers Act, as amended by the National Care Service Bill, is based on the following assumptions:

1) The number of adult carers accessing personalised breaks is based on a future steady state in which 34% of all adult carers will have an adult carer support plan (ACSP). This assumption is carried over from the Carers Act Financial Memorandum.

2) The proportion of carers that have an ACSP will vary depending on the intensity of caring.

3) The proportion of carers with an ACSP that access short breaks will also vary depending on the intensity of caring.

Assumptions were also required for how the proportions in 2) and 3) vary across the carer intensity bands.

Table 1 shows the assumed profile for the proportion of carers with an ACSP across the intensity groupings; and table 2 shows the assumed profile for those with an ACSP that will access personalised breaks support under the Carers Act.

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of adult carers with an ACSP	23%	40%	60%	80%	34%

Number of adult carers	624,864	59,280	29,640	125,215	839,000

Number of adult Carers with an ACSP	143,592	23,712	17,784	100,172	285,260

Table 1: Adult carers with an ACSP

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of adult carers with ACSP that receive personalised break	10%	20%	40%	60%	30%

Number of adult carers receiving personalised break	14,359	4,742	7,114	60,103	86,318

Table 2: Adult carers with an ACSP that receive personalised breaks

Taking these together gives the profile for the proportion of all adult carers accessing personalised breaks support under the Carers Act, shown in table 3.

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of all adult carers receiving a personalised break	2%	8%	24%	48%	10%

Table 3: Proportion of adult carers receiving a carer break

We can see that the overall proportion is 10%, but that this varies from 2% for those in the lowest intensity group to 48% in the highest.

Easy Access Support

The starting point for the estimates for the cost of non-statutory easy access support is the number of adult carers who do not receive a carer break, which is derived from the calculations above and shown in table 4 below.

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Number of adult carers not receiving personalised breaks support	610,505	54,538	22,527	65,112	752,681

Table 4: Number of adult carers not accessing personalised breaks

In a similar way to the estimates for breaks under the Carers Act, the proportion of carers taking up easy access breaks is assumed to vary across the caring intensity groupings and assumptions were also required for this profile, which are shown in table 5.

		20 – 34 hours a week	35 – 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of adult carers not receiving personalised breaks who take up easy access support	10%	40%	40%	40%	16%

Number of adult carrers taking up easy access support	61,051	21,815	9,011	26,045	117,921

Table 5: Adult carers not accessing personalised breaks who take up easy access support

Applying these with the total number of adult carers gives the profile for the proportion of all adult carers assumed to take up easy access support and is shown in table 6.

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of adult carers who take up easy access support	10%	37%	30%	21%	14%

Table 6: Proportion of all adult carers taking easy access support

We can see that the overall proportion is 14%, but that this varies from 10% for those in the lowest intensity group to 21% in the highest. Note that the relatively small proportion in the highest intensity group reflects the relatively high proportion in this group assumed to receive personalised support under the Carers Act.

The combined estimates for both types of support (i.e. Carers Act support and non-statutory easy access support assuming people are not generally receiving both) is shown in table 7.

		20 - 34 hours a week	35 - 49 hours a week	50 or more hours	Total
Proportion of all adult carers receiving either personalised breaks or easy access support	12%	45%	54%	69%	24%

Number of all adult carers receiving either personalised breaks or easy access support	75,410	26,558	16,124	86,148	204,239

Table 7: Combined Carers Act support and easy access support

We can see that 24% of adult carers are assumed to access support, varying from 12% of those in the lowest care intensity group to 69% of those in the highest intensity group.

Question reference: S6W-12197

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 November 2022
Current Status: Answered by Kevin Stewart on 29 November 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the current pension liability for the reported 75,000 local authority employees who would transfer to a National Care Service under its proposals.

The Bill does not propose that 75,000 local authority employees would transfer. As the policy memorandum to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill makes clear the under the National Care Service, services will continue to be planned, designed and delivered locally because the care boards will plan and commission services for their local area. For social care services currently provided in-house by local authorities, that may continue under a commissioning arrangement with the care board, or the care board may take over direct delivery, with staff transferring to the care board. These will be decisions to be taken locally as the care boards are established. Once the structure and governance of care boards and their localities have been decided, decisions about the employment of staff will be made.

Thorough consideration will be given to all options regarding pensions and stakeholders will be consulted before any decisions are taken.

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