- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what estimate it has made of the number of hours of palliative care that have not been delivered due to staff shortages in the last five years, broken down by (a) year and (b) NHS board.
Answer
Referral to specialist palliative care services for people living with serious health conditions and/or those who require specialist palliative care when they are dying is based on individualised needs assessments. As a wide range of specialist and generalist staff in hospitals, care homes, primary care, social care, hospices and the third sector are involved in providing palliative care to individuals and their families, and could all be considered as delivering palliative care, it would be challenging to efficiently and effectively gather this data centrally.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many patients waited longer than the recommended time for palliative care services to begin in each of the last five years, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
This information is not held centrally.
Referral to specialist palliative care services for people living with serious health conditions and/or those who require specialist palliative care when they are dying is based on individualised needs assessments. As a wide range of specialist and generalist staff in hospitals, care homes, primary care, social care, hospices and the third sector are involved in providing palliative care to individuals and their families, and could all be considered as delivering palliative care, it would be challenging to efficiently and effectively gather this data centrally.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether any NHS boards have reported difficulty in recruiting specialist palliative care professionals in the last five years, and what actions it has taken in response.
Answer
Health boards are autonomous institutions responsible for their own planning, recruitment, employment and deployment of staff. The Scottish Government supports Health Boards in these matters through the setting of strategic policies and frameworks at a national level.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what the average waiting time has been for access to palliative care services in each of the last five years, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
This information is not held centrally.
Referral to specialist palliative care services for people living with serious health conditions and/or those who require specialist palliative care when they are dying is based on individualised needs assessments. As a wide range of specialist and generalist staff in hospitals, care homes, primary care, social care, hospices and the third sector are involved in providing palliative care to individuals and their families, and could all be considered as delivering palliative care, it would be challenging to efficiently and effectively gather this data centrally.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to reduce waiting times for access to palliative and end-of-life care services across Scotland.
Answer
The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that everyone who needs it can access high-quality palliative care that is right for their circumstances.
The Scottish Government published a draft palliative care strategy ‘Palliative care matters for all’ on 02 October 2024 for consultation. The consultation closed on 10 January 2025. The responses have now been analysed, and the final version of the strategy and analysis report are due to be published in the summer. The strategy will be published alongside a delivery plan, which will set out our approach to ensuring that everyone who needs it can access timely palliative care and care around dying. This work has been closely developed on a partnership basis with key partners, including those with lived experience of receiving palliative care and their families.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 30 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on the number of unmet care hours due to a shortage of carers in each year since 2018, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
Health and Social Care Partnerships provide Public Health Scotland with a weekly snapshot of the current demand for Care at Home services. The data includes information on the total number of hours of care that people were waiting to receive, following an assessment of their needs. This information is available via the following weblink: Dashboard - People requiring a social care assessment and care at home services.
Please note that the information does not include the reasons why these hours of care were yet to be provided, nor does the Scottish Government hold information on local social care staffing levels.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 30 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what any shortfall in the social care workforce has been, in terms of hours of unmet care, since 2018, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
While the Scottish Government has overall responsibility for health and social care support policy in Scotland, it is for local Integration Joint Boards (IJBs) to ensure that social care support services are in place to provide their population with the appropriate support in the right place and at the right time.
The Scottish Government does not hold information centrally in relation HSCP’s workforce numbers and in turn could not comment on how this impacts unmet need. This information would need to be provided by local areas themselves.
We understand the pressures being faced and addressing long waiting times for social care support is one of the reasons that the 2025-26 Budget prioritised both the Local Government Settlement and the Health & Social Care portfolio with both receiving record funding allocations.
This includes almost £2.2bn for social care and integration – increasing investment by £1.2bn since 2021-22. On top of that, our Budget makes a record £15 billion available for councils for 2025-26.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 30 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been on a waiting list for a social care assessment in each year since 2018, also broken down by NHS board.
Answer
The information requested is not held centrally for all years requested.
However, weekly data on the number of people waiting for a social care assessment is published monthly by Public Health Scotland at Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) level. The dashboard can be accessed via the following link:
People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services
Data is available from 24 October 2022 onwards. Comparisons over time should be made with caution due to a change in definitions implemented in January 2024.
Comparison of figures between HSCPs should also be made with caution and should be done in conjunction with the data quality notes available in the dashboard.
Not all Partnerships were able to provide all data. The data quality section of the dashboard provides more information on each of the partnerships' ability to provide data.
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 30 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what the total estimated number of care hours required was, and how many were delivered, in each year since 2018, also broken down by NHS board.
Answer
Data on the total number of care hours planned for delivery is not held centrally.
Data on the number of hours of care at home funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland is published annually by Public Health Scotland and can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:
Care at Home Statistics for Scotland: Support and services funded by Health and Social Care Partnerships in Scotland 2023/2024 - Care at Home Statistics for Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland
Data are available for 2018-19 to 2023-24.
Data showing the number of hours for people assessed but yet to be delivered, and for number of additional hours of care to be delivered to those already receiving a care package is published by Public Health Scotland at local authority level. This can be found via the dashboard on following weblink:
Overview - People requiring a Social Care assessment and Care at Home services - Care at home - Social and community care - Healthcare system - Public Health Scotland
- Asked by: Jamie Halcro Johnston, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 19 May 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Maree Todd on 30 May 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what the average time has been between receiving a social care assessment and delivery of a social care package in each year since 2018, also broken down by NHS board.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold data which would answer this question.
However, data up to 2022-23 on Social Care eligibility and waiting times is publicly available at Local Authority level via the following weblink:
Social care: eligibility criteria and waiting times Scotland 2022-2023 - gov.scot
Data showing the time waited between completion of a community care assessment and delivery of a new personal care service in the final quarter of each financial year can be found in the ‘Waiting times new personal care clients’ worksheet of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.
However there are a number of caveats with these data:
- The data return template sent to LAs is aggregate, and only grouped time periods are collected. Therefore it is not possible to calculate an average waiting time – only a distribution of time periods is possible.
- Many local authorities have reported difficulty in providing the information asked for in this data collection and therefore not all data is available for every year.
- Due to the gaps in the Local Authority level data, we cannot effectively aggregate to Health Board. Completeness levels for each LA can be found within the ‘Data completeness’ tab of the Excel workbook accompanying the publication.
Due to the issues faced in collecting this data from LAs and due to the lack of completeness, this data collection has been paused while we explore alternative methods of obtaining higher quality information on eligibility criteria and the length of time people wait for services. Therefore the most recent data available is for
2022-23.
