Seòmar agus comataidhean

Following the First Minister’s announcement on 13 July, we will update our published guidance for marriage ceremonies and wedding receptions as soon as possible to take account of the new arrangements. In advance of that, we are writing to our principal contacts within the wedding sector to highlight the key changes we will make to the guidance to set out the impact.

The Scottish Government has recently announced a suite of measures to continue to support NHS dentistry, including a vital funding package of up to £5M for improved ventilation in dental premises, and an extension of free PPE for the dental sector, which from July will increase by up to 50%. This builds on the continued phased remobilisation of NHS dental services, ensuring that as many patients can be seen within the current set of infection, protection and control measures required for the safe operation of dental treatment.

NHS dental services are largely provided by independent dental contractors. Information on appointments is held by each individual dental practice.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-00274 on 15 June 2021. 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.

General Practice in Scotland is funded through a "Global Sum" which is divided between all practices on the basis of their share of the estimated workload (the Scottish Workload Formula). All patients, whether resident in Scotland or living across the border, count towards practices' share of the Global Sum.

Although the funding formula is different in England, the model is the same.

The Care Inspectorate is the regulatory body for care services in Scotland, which supports improvement. The Care Inspectorate carry out regular comprehensive inspections of all care homes in Scotland, and are accountable to Scottish Ministers. By law all care providers in Scotland must be registered with the Care Inspectorate. The Care Inspectorate looks at the quality of care in care services, including care homes to ensure it meets high standards. Where improvement is needed, it supports services to make positive changes.

In addition, as part of the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s strategy for pharmaceutical care in Scotland ‘Achieving Excellence in Pharmaceutical Care’ the Scottish Government committed to improving the pharmaceutical care of residents in care homes. A Scottish Pharmacy Clinical Leadership Fellow has been appointed and is focussing on key improvement areas such as: developing a national pharmacy care home specialist interest group, reducing medicines waste, undertaking a national audit to determine the pharmacy resource to care homes, developing a pharmacy care home training resource with NES, reviewing how care home residents access medicines and investigating the benefits of using information technology in care homes (for example using electronic medicine administration records (eMAR) and medicines, care and review (MCR).

Medicine administration is primarily recorded on medicine administration record (MAR) charts. The dose/dosage is recorded along with the times for administration. This will either be specific times or it may be words such as breakfast, noon etc. A small number of care homes use an electronic MAR (eMAR) system, where the timing of the medicines is recorded electronically. This can confirm that the resident’s medicines were administered, the time of administration and confirmation of the stock balance.

NHS Scotland Health Boards use the delivery model which is most suitable for their local circumstances, whilst maintaining a Covid-19 safe environment.

The NHS Dumfries and Galloway system schedules its own appointments using a booking algorithm, which works as follows:

•First checks for GP practices as a vaccination location;

•Then checks for nearest vaccination centre using estimated time to drive to location ( via google maps ) to find the closest centre, there is no upper limit for travel time;

•Repeats step 2 until it finds a vaccination centre with available appointments.

A person would potentially be asked to travel a large distance if there is no capacity at nearby centres. This is managed by NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scottish Government officials were instructed to contact NHS Dumfries and Galloway to ascertain if more local vaccination sites can be opened and if more are needed.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded that it is monitoring and addressing this. There is re-booking capacity to reduce the risk of appointing patients to venues that would require significant journey times. And NHS D&G continues to review uptake and "did not attend" rates across the region to determine if it is seeing any localities where there is a need to increase our provision to increase uptake rates.

NHS Scotland Health Boards use the delivery model which is most suitable for their local circumstances, whilst maintaining a Covid-19 safe environment.

The NHS Dumfries and Galloway system schedules its own appointments using a booking algorithm, which works as follows:

•First checks for GP practices as a vaccination location;

•Then checks for nearest vaccination centre using estimated time to drive to location ( via google maps ) to find the closest centre, there is no upper limit for travel time;

•Repeats step 2 until it finds a vaccination centre with available appointments.

A person would potentially be asked to travel a large distance if there is no capacity at nearby centres. This is managed by NHS Dumfries and Galloway.

Scottish Government officials were instructed to contact NHS Dumfries and Galloway to ascertain if more local vaccination sites can be opened and if more are needed.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway responded that it is monitoring and addressing this. There is re-booking capacity to reduce the risk of appointing patients to venues that would require significant journey times. And NHS D&G continues to review uptake and "did not attend" rates across the region to determine if it is seeing any localities where there is a need to increase our provision to increase uptake rates.

The Scottish Government published guidance outlining the action that local authorities and Registered Social Landlords should be taking to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on delivering grant funded affordable housing projects which were contractually awarded prior to the first lockdown in 2020. While the guidance notes that the firm aim of local authority/ Registered Social Landlord engagement with their contractors should be to reach agreement which negates the need for additional funding support, it also sets out the circumstances under which applications for additional grant funding will be considered if a contract cannot be made to work and no other negotiated solution is achievable. We received an application from Cunninghame Housing Association for a project in Dumfries and Galloway in March 2021, this was reviewed in line with our published guidance. Unfortunately there was insufficient evidence supplied to support the application. Further information was received in May but is still insufficient to allow us to complete our appraisal. When all the required information has been received, we will be able to fully assess the application.

The Scottish Government has taken a range of actions to support the private voluntary independent nursery sector throughout the 1140 hours early learning and childcare expansion programme, including to support the recruitment of highly qualified childcare staff.

Across all college, university and apprenticeship training routes a total of 13,828 individual training programmes have been undertaken since 2016. That includes:

• An additional 3,650 places on HNC level courses and 1,334 degree level courses;
• 2,050 Foundation Apprenticeship starts since 2016; and
• 6,764 Modern Apprenticeship starts since 2016.

We have also invested around £11 million since 2017-18 to increase the volume of practitioners undertaking the BA Childhood Practice manager qualification.

Since 2017, the Scottish Government has delivered a national recruitment campaign to attract new recruits into all parts of the childcare sector, including the private and third sectors. We have provided funding to enable private and third sector childcare providers to advertise posts for free on the Myjobscotland site, alongside local authority vacancies.

The payment of sustainable rates to providers in the private and third sector for the delivery of funded early learning and childcare is a key aspect of Funding Follows the Child. To enable this the current multi-year funding package agreed between the Scottish Government and COSLA, which covers the period until the end of the 2021-22 financial year, ensures that these providers receive sustainable rates that are set at a level which enables all childcare workers delivering the funded entitlement to be paid at least the real Living Wage.

In addition, in the past year the Scottish Government has made more than £22 million of dedicated financial support available to private and third sector day care of children services in response to the pandemic.

To ensure we understand the current challenges the sector is experiencing, we will closely analyse the findings on workforce from a Financial Sustainability Health Check survey currently in progress, and engage with the sectoral representative bodies to explore further action which can be taken to grow and maintain a diverse and high quality workforce which meets the needs of children and families.