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The Scottish Government is committed to bringing in Anne’s Law to ensure people who live in adult care homes have rights to see and spend time with those who are important to them in order to support their health and wellbeing. To support the delivery of Anne’s Law, a public consultation was published on Friday 24 September seeking views on proposals. This is available at http://consult.gov.scot

The consultation builds on a programme of work to enable people living in adult care homes to maintain family and friendship connections. This includes guidance issued on 15 September on named visitors being able people to maintain contact with loved ones during managed COVID outbreaks, see: https://www.gov.scot/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-adult-care-homes-visiting-guidance/ .

The Scottish Government is also proposing to strengthen the Health and Social Care Standards and a consultation was launched on 16 September seeking views around ensuring people are able to spend time with their loved ones. This is available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/consultation-strengthening-health-social-care-standards-support-people-live-adult-care-homes-maintain-family-friendship-connections/

We commissioned and published in 2018 a first national independent expert report on specialist NHS dementia beds provision Transforming Specialist Dementia Hospital Care with recommendations for sector modernisation as part of wider whole-system reform in localities.

The report noted the most recent official figures at that time on numbers of NHS Old Age Psychiatry beds and Geriatric Medicine beds. These figures include people with an organic illness (dementia) and those with a functional illness (mental ill health conditions such as depression, bi-polar and schizophrenia) and the report noted that it was difficult to provide a precise number of patients with dementia in these settings, given the frequency of co-morbid conditions and under-diagnosis of dementia.

We continue to work with the author of the report as part of wider work since 2018 to support implementation of the report and to support local service modernisation, workforce planning and resourcing.

MHOs are critically important as they protect and safeguard the rights of vulnerable people with mental health conditions.

MHO workload pressures have no doubt been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, but we are aware of a number of issues that are having an impact. These include significant numbers of applications for guardianship orders under Adults with Incapacity legislation, supporting hospital discharges when there is an issue with incapacity, as well as the challenges of working on detention and compulsory treatment orders during the pandemic. MHOs also provide ongoing advice for other professionals, users of services and carers about the use of mental health legislation when planning care and treatment.

While it is the responsibility of local authorities to ensure they have the appropriate levels of MHOs in place, we have been working, with COSLA, local authorities, the Scottish Social Services Council and others since 2019 to improve MHO capacity across Scotland.

We are committed to addressing a shortfall in the MHO workforce by 2023 as part of our wider Integrated Health and Social Care Workforce Plan (2019) and we are investing £1.5 million over 2019-2022 to support Local Authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships in training additional MHOs. Additionally, we are currently evaluating with COSLA options to support new MHO posts and decisions will be made in due course.

The Scottish Government has regular communication with the UK Government on a range of issues relating to human trafficking and exploitation, including the decision by the European Court of Human Rights in VCL and AN v UK.

We continue to work with the UK Government and other organisations to ensure the findings of VCL and AN v UK are appropriately considered.

With the statutory procedures completed, Transport Scotland is progressing through the necessary governance approval procedures that require to be completed before any procurement process for the A737 Improvements at Beith project could begin. Once this process is complete, The Transport Minister will write to the member with an update on plans for delivery of the project.

Later this year we will consult on our Low Income Winter Heating Assistance which we plan to introduce next winter.

We want people to have benefits they can rely on so this new £50 benefit will replace the unstable Cold Weather Payment provided by the DWP. The payment will bring stability and security for around 400,000 low income households who will now be able to rely on getting help with their fuel bills every winter and not rely on it being cold enough for long enough to get a payment.

This benefit is a clear example of where we are using our limited powers over social security to improve the lives of people and increase their incomes.

I have agreed a joint statement with the BMA on face to face appointments that will be published later today.

As they have for many years, face-to-face appointments form part of a hybrid model also including video and telephone consultations. While we all aspire to return to greater availability of face-to-face, many patients will also wish to continue with telephone or video consultations. In joint communication with the BMA I have set out my expectation that recent changes to guidance should result in an increase in GP face-to-face appointments.

Rather than setting an arbitrary return date, what is most important is that appointments are agreed through shared decision making, balancing patient choice and clinical judgement.

Our Commitment to Childminding , published in January 2021, sets out how the Scottish Government will continue to work with partners to promote childminding as a positive career choice and as a choice for parents and carers when they decide the most appropriate childcare option for their family.

This includes promoting childminding careers by working with employability bodies, including the Department of Work and Pensions and Skills Development Scotland, and exploring the opportunities to ensure that Early Learning and Childcare students are exposed to the career options of childminding within student placements during the course of their study.

The Scottish Government will continue to monitor trends in the number of childminding services and to ensure that our approach reflects the evidence obtained from the recently published Financial Sustainability Health Check . We also want to ensure that childminders continue to play a vital role in ongoing delivery of the 1140 programme and in how we implement our new Programme for Government Commitments for one and two year olds over the course of this Parliament.

The Care Inspectorate for Scotland are responsible for setting and reviewing the ratios for all childcare setting in Scotland. Usually, childminders can care for a maximum of eight children at any one time under the age of 16 years, of whom a maximum of six children will be under 12 years, no more than three children will be under primary school age, and only one child will be under one year old.

The number of children cared for at any one time includes the childminder’s own children or family members, whether or not they are present in the service. Evidence indicates that these ratios provide good outcomes for children.

In discussion with a setting, The Care Inspectorate may vary the adult to child ratios to take account of special circumstances that support the best outcomes for children, such as the presence of siblings under the age of one, the presence of children with additional support needs or the layout of the premises being used. Ratios will also be varied where more than one childminder works from the premises, or the childminder employs an assistant.

Guidance was last published on these ratios in 2018. It was last reviewed in 2019.

The next round of allocations will be confirmed and dispersed to local authority areas this Autumn.