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Evidence shows that the very smallest and sickest babies, including those born extremely premature (below 27 weeks), do best when they are cared for in larger specialist neonatal units which look after a lot of these babies, and have the right staff and services available on site to give them the very best care. The Best Start report recommended that we move to three of these units in Scotland, to meet the needs of our population, and neonatal experts then went through a rigorous process to decide on the three NICUs of the ERI in Edinburgh, the RHC in Glasgow, and the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital.

The Best Start emphasises parents as key partners in caring for their baby and aims to keep mothers and babies, and families together as much as possible in the crucial early weeks, with services designed around them. We have a number of measures already in place to support families with babies in neonatal care:

• Providing accommodation for parents to stay on or near neonatal units and facilities within the unit to encourage kangaroo skin to skin care and early support for breastfeeding;
• Roll out of the Young Patients Family Fund (formerly the Neonatal Expenses Fund) to support all families with the costs of travel, accommodation and food whilst their baby is in neonatal care; and
• Repatriating babies to their local neonatal units as soon as clinically possible

As part of the next phase, Scottish Government will be consulting with families in the affected areas on implementation of the proposals, so that we can take account of their concerns when the pathways and processes for the new model of care are designed.

This will affect a very small number of families however it is important that we hear the voices of those families to input into design of service delivery.

Improving menopause care is one of the priorities of the Government’s Women’s Health Plan. There is now a specialist menopause service in every NHS Board, with a buddy system in place for the Island Boards. Women can access accurate and comprehensive information on NHS Inform, where the signs and symptoms of menopause is consistently in the top 10 of most viewed pages, and education and training for general practice is being developed.

The Scottish Government is providing additional investment of over £1 billion for health and social care in 2023-24, taking funding to a record high of over £19 billion. This funding is already supporting menopause services, as well as delivery of specific actions relating to women’s health as we continue to drive forward the implementation of the Plan.

We are determined to ensure that women who need it are able to access care and support for menopause, in primary and specialist care.

Work continues through the menopause actions of the Women’s Health Plan to facilitate women’s access to holistic care. This includes commissioning NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop a bespoke training package on menopause and menstrual health for general practice and others working in Primary Care.

The Women's Health Plan: Progress Report published in January 2023 and the recently published Women's Health Plan: Interim Progress Update 2023 provide comprehensive updates on progress of all the actions in the Women’s Health Plan.

Following the testing period the Early Implementer Boards noted that no negative feedback was received from families about the process. However, due to only a small number of babies being transferred this made it difficult to achieve the depth of parent feedback hoped for.

In order to capture parent representation in the Options Appraisal and Best Start Programme Board decision making process, the Chief Executive of Bliss sits on our Best Start Programme Board and was a participant in the options appraisal process, representing the views of neonatal families.

As part of the next phase, Scottish Government will be consulting with families in the affected areas on implementation of the proposals, so that we can take account of their concerns when the pathways and processes for the new model of care are designed. This will affect a very small number of families however it is important that we hear the voices of those families to input into design of service delivery.

The Best Start emphasises parents as key partners in caring for their baby and aims to keep mothers and babies, and families together as much as possible in the crucial early weeks, with services designed around them. We have a number of measures already in place to support families with babies in neonatal care:

• Providing accommodation for parents to stay on or near neonatal units and facilities within the unit to encourage kangaroo skin to skin care and early support for breastfeeding;
• Roll out of the Young Patients Family Fund (formerly the Neonatal Expenses Fund) to support families with the costs of travel, accommodation and food whilst their baby is in neonatal care; and
• Repatriating babies to their local neonatal units as soon as clinically possible

Neonatal units have agreed to continue to seek parent feedback to ensure opportunities to improve the experiences of families are identified on an ongoing basis.

Since its creation in August 2020 and 31st March 2023 the Social Housing Net Zero Heat Fund has awarded £52,188,302 in grant funding. The breakdown across financial years can be found in the following table:

The Scottish Government asks NHS Boards to report on the number of travel claims, accommodation claims and meals reimbursed. The data held by the Scottish Government, as reported by NHS Boards, is set out in the following table.

The Social Housing Net Zero Heat fund has awarded grant for the retrofit of 11,662 homes since its creation in August 2020 and March 31st 2023. The breakdown across financial years and by local authority can be found in the following table:

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, Scottish Funding Council (SFC) publications including those reporting on college withdrawals, undergo systematic and periodic reviews on the strengths and limitations of the data.

As an example of the continuing work in this area, the SFC has initiated collection of students’ reasons for withdrawal from colleges. Experimental data has previously been collected, and SFC will be working with Colleges Scotland and College Development Network to improve the capture of student withdrawal data for publication in future years.

The SFC is also progressing an internal review of the definitions of college student outcomes metrics, to ensure that they provide the most appropriate measures of success for students.

The report from the Perinatal Sub-Group on the outcome of the options appraisal process identified skills maintenance as a key concern for those units no longer categorised as a NICU.

This is based on the expectation that small and sick babies will continue to be delivered unexpectedly out with Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU’s) and require stabilisation and transfer.

Local Neonatal Units (LNU’s) will continue to deliver intensive care and care for babies from 27+0 weeks that need stabilisation and treatment, so both nursing staff and medical staff will continue to have experience in delivering these aspects of intensive care.

The Scottish Government will work with the Scottish Perinatal Network and NHS Education for Scotland to take forward a number of actions to ensure that appropriate learning and development opportunities are available for staff impacted by the changes.

The Neonatal Expenses Fund (NEF) ran from April 2018 to July 2021. The Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF) was launched on 26 July 2021 and the new fund subsumed the NEF to create a single unified fund.

Part (a) With regard to the budget to date for NEF/YPFF I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18481 on 14 June 2023. 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

Part (b)