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The Scottish Access Collaborative has developed a comprehensive programme of work over the last year to support a sustainable balance between demand and capacity in the health and care service in Scotland. It has endorsed a number of challenges which are being taken through an agreed development, testing and mandate process, and is actively working to identify new high impact challenges for future inclusion in the programme. Current workstreams include:

• Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT)
• Enhanced Recovery Pre-operative anaemia programme
• Waiting List Validation
• Team Job Planning
• Accelerating the Development of Enhanced Practitioners (ADEPt)
• Virtual Attendance scoping and piloting
• Clinical Pathways Infrastructure Scoping

It has also supported a series of Specialty Group workshops through the year, which are co-producing a series of recommendation reports. These are completed for Cardiology, Urology, Gynaecology, Gastroenterology, Respiratory and underway for ENT, Chronic Pain, Neurology, Dermatology, Breast Services, General Surgery and Vascular Services. Orthopaedics and Ophthalmology continue to contribute through their existing national Specialty Groups.

The requested information is not held centrally as ISD do not collect vacancy data on support staff, including hospital porters.

Further notes:

• Further information on the statistics, including information on how the data are collected and notes to aid interpretation, is given in the 'FAQs' section of the Workforce Statistics website at http://www.isdscotland.org/workforce/ .

The Scottish Government is supportive of the innovative approach being developed by NHS Grampian to set up an international health office to provide support and guidance for staff who choose to get involved in global citizenship. These plans are aligned to the aims of the NHS Scotland Global Citizenship Programme, which is a key part of the delivery of the Scottish Government’s International Development Strategy.

We welcome this report from Parkinson’s UK and will consider it closely as we continue to work with the neurological community to develop Scotland’s first National Action Plan on Neurological Conditions. The public consultation on our draft plan closed on 8 February 2019. We will carefully consider all feedback received and publish our final plan later this year. We work closely with Parkinson’s UK who keep us updated about services and support for people with Parkinson’s in Scotland.

As part of the 2017-2020 National Dementia Strategy, we continue to take national action to support local partnerships to improve the quality of post-diagnostic support in line with the national LDP Standard, to train the workforce, innovative and improve the consistency of the service and access to it.

We recently commissioned Healthcare Improvement Scotland to lead work on a new locality-based project to test the delivery of home-based post-diagnostic services to a high volume to clients with a high level of additional care needs. This will involve innovations in terms of service design, professional roles and technology. A test site will be selected in coming months.

In addition, we have extended by 12 months the projects in East Edinburgh, Nithsdale and Shetland to test the re-location of post-diagnostic services in primary care. We also continue to deliver post-diagnostic training as part of the national Promoting Excellence dementia skills and knowledge framework.

Integration Joint Boards are responsible for planning, commissioning and delivering dementia post-diagnostic services.

We are working across the wide range of public services to harness the broadest range of opportunities to improve the population's mental health. Our PfG announced an additional £250 million of investment in mental health over the next five years, to introduce a package of measures to improve services for children, young people and adults, and embed support for good mental health across our public services.

We expect NHS Boards to work with their Integration Authority, local government, third sector and other partners to deliver fit for purpose mental health services and support that meets the needs of their local population, including women in this age group.

As part of the 2017-2020 National Dementia Strategy, we continue to take national action to support local partnerships to improve the quality of post-diagnostic support, to train the workforce, innovative and improve the consistency of the service and access to it.

Many people are diagnosed in very old age with other chronic or terminal conditions and for some their dementia support – including in residential or acute settings– will be an addition to existing care packages and not reflected in the post-diagnostic figures. Others will not wish to take up the service straight away while they process their diagnosis. We are doing more work to understand the array of reasons individuals might not complete the service.

Integration Joint Boards are responsible for planning, commissioning and delivering dementia post-diagnostic services. The Scottish Budget delivers additional resource funding of almost £730 million (5.5%) for health and care services. Our budget includes £160 million of additional health and care investment in local authorities – which will support social care and mental health measures, including those delivered by Integrated Joint Boards.

Over the long term life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased. However, it is difficult to pinpoint the cause of changing trends. The issues are complex and relate to an ageing population, inequalities, deprivation and poverty.

We remain focused on addressing the underlying causes that drive health inequalities. Our alcohol prevention framework and our diet and healthy weight strategy are among the measures designed to help tackle some of the key issues.

Further discussion on the provision of independent advice on race equality, including any new Independent Race Equality Adviser, will take place when the Race Equality Action Plan Programme Board next meet on 4 March 2019. This will inform decisions by Ministers in due course. At that point a further update will be provided.

Over the long term life expectancy and healthy life expectancy have increased. The latest data are of concern. We have a range of strategies to address inequalities in health and their underlying drivers. Health inequalities are a symptom of wider income inequality. That is why we have taken action such as setting in statute our ambition to eradicate child poverty, and outlining concrete action to make progress on this goal through our first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan.