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The practice of company employment or company sponsoring of specialist stoma nurses within NHS Scotland ceased in 2006. The nurses' transfer into direct NHS employment was one of the outcomes from a Scottish Executive review of the supply of stoma appliances in the community, which were circulated to NHS Scotland through a Health Department letter, HDL (2006) 15. A link to that letter is as follows:

https://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/mels/hd2006_15.pdf

The rationale for the decision was to improve governance and reduce the risk of conflict of interest for stoma care nurses within Scotland, and that remains the position of the Scottish Government.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-23499 on 6 June 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Scottish Government is developing a monitoring and evaluation framework to monitor the impact of the Young Carer Grant on the quality of life of young carers. On-going stakeholder engagement will provide the Scottish Government with further opportunities to refine our approach in monitoring the impact of the Young Carer Grant.

We are not considering delivering the Young Carer Grant in a non-monetary form. If this were introduced in the future, it would be in accordance with the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 which requires any non-cash benefits to be paid only with the consent of the client.

The Scottish Government has not made any assessment of the option to deliver the Young Carer Grant in a form other than money as it is being delivered as an annual grant of £300.

The information requested is not held centrally.

At the meeting on 7 March, the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) agreed pathways should be developed in sequence to allow work to be focused, take advantage of learning opportunities and to ensure experts in homelessness service delivery across Scotland could engage effectively with the work as a whole. The work is starting with groups who are most straightforwardly identifiable and where there is a clear opportunity to make progress.

The A Way Home Scotland Coalition, who are members of HPSG, are focused on developing and implementing work around youth homelessness in general. The HPSG has deputed the Coalition to develop the care leavers pathway, and Coalition members CELCIS have convened a working group to take this forward. The first meeting took place on 20 May, setting out the groundwork for this activity. The work is expected to proceed at pace over the summer.

Scoping work has been carried out on further pathways in relation to people experiencing domestic abuse and people with experience of the armed forces.

The Scottish Government is currently undertaking analysis of potential policy and delivery options for the income supplement.

I will provide an update to Parliament on this work, and progress against the wider measures in the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, later this month.

Within the first Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan we have set out clear analysis on the anticipated impact of our policies and approaches. This analysis is provided for all actions which directly impact on the three key drivers of poverty reduction: increasing income from work and earnings; reducing household costs, and, maximising income from social security and benefits in kind.

We will provide further detail of impact within our first annual progress report, and set out our plans for evaluation in the longer term, later this month.

We have made significant progress in implementing the recommendations of Dr Montgomery’s review. This progress is reflected in the increasing proportion of medicines for rare, very rare and end of life conditions that are now approved by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) for general use on the NHS in Scotland. This approval rate for submitted medicines in these categories now stands at over 78 per cent, compared with 48 per cent between 2011 and 2013.

Increasing access to new medicines has been assisted by:

• An established part of the SMC decision making process that hears and gives weight to patients’ and clinicians’ experiences;
• New public summary documents which explain SMC decisions about routine access to medicines in a patient friendly format;
• A new “ultra-orphan” pathway that allows medicines for very rare conditions to be available on the NHS in Scotland on an interim basis whilst data is collected on their clinical effectiveness; and
• The Peer Approved Clinical System Tier Two, which allows wider access to medicines on an individual case-by-case basis where those medicines have not been accepted by the SMC.

Steps have also been taken to implement Dr Montgomery’s recommendations related to data about the use and effects of medicines. A Data Scoping Taskforce was established in 2017 with a remit to determine the digital capabilities required to utilise real world health data to support the assessment and introduction of new medicines, together with ensuring on-going safe, effective use of established medicines. The Taskforce published its report on 18 September 2018 and actions are being considered as part of a range of ongoing policy initiatives, including our Digital Health and Care Strategy, and the implementation of a Hospital Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration system.

Important final steps towards the completion of implementation include new steps that will make the fullest use of devolved powers to achieve the best prices for new medicines.