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Meeting of the Parliament 09 June 2011

09 Jun 2011 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Caring for Scotland’s Older People

Sturgeon, Nicola SNP Glasgow Southside Watch on SPTV

I have a copy of it here, so I am sure that Jackie Baillie will take it up with the leader of West Lothian Council. I am holding a copy of an e-mail to Ms Baillie.

I want to end this part of my speech by saying that I will keep members fully updated. I have agreed to meet the Opposition spokespeople this afternoon to brief them in more detail. I know that this is an issue of concern and that members will want to ensure that they get full details of it as developments take their course.

I hope that the Presiding Officer will give me a wee bit of latitude, because I have a number of other issues to get through.

I turn to the Elsie Inglis care home. I cannot comment on all the specifics, given the on-going police investigation. However, we expect the highest standards of care from all who provide it in Scotland. The national care standards set out clearly the responsibilities for those who provide care. It is their duty to deliver those standards. We have a robust and a risk-based system of inspection, which was enshrined in the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 and was supported in the previous session of Parliament. Its job is to ensure that where failures occur they are identified and rectified and, where necessary—if it is in the interests of vulnerable people—services cease to operate. Indeed, Elsie Inglis care home has ceased to operate.

Jackie Baillie mentioned budgets. In the interests of accuracy, I point out that SCSWIS did not start with a 25 per cent budget cut; that is a budget reduction over a number of years to reflect the fact that SCSWIS is three organisations merged into one. I give members the clear assurance that we will do whatever is necessary to ensure the highest standards of care in our care homes.

I will briefly address the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland’s report into the care of Mrs V. The report is not generally representative of care in our hospitals, but we know that hospitals are a setting in which care for dementia patients must improve. That is why they are one of the two key areas that are mentioned in the national dementia strategy. The standards that were published on Monday seek to improve standards of dementia care in all settings, but I have specifically asked the chief nursing officer to oversee their implementation in hospital settings and I have asked Healthcare Improvement Scotland to carry out a programme of inspections to ensure that our hospitals are living up to the clinical standards for older people in acute care, which were first published in 2002. All our older people, whether or not they have dementia, have a right to expect the highest standards of care and compassion from the NHS.

The Presiding Officer is beginning to look threateningly at me, so I will end with reference to the future and the agenda of integration. We need to provide better and more consistent services with better outcomes over the next few years for more people using resources that will be under pressure for some time. The report that Audit Scotland published last week made it clear that a voluntary approach to integration has not delivered fast or far enough. We must find a way of releasing and reinvesting the £1.4 billion that we currently spend on unplanned admissions, and we need to accelerate progress in shifting the balance of care. We established the change fund to begin that process, but we must go further. I am glad that there is political consensus on the need for integration. I accept the differences around how we should do that, which is why we are examining a range of options, and I intend to seek to build maximum consensus around the issue in the coming months.

I look forward to hearing the exchange of views and ideas in the debate. I want to leave the chamber in no doubt at all that this area of policy and practice is of the highest priority for me and for the Government.

I move amendment S4M-00234.3, to leave out from “further notes” to end and insert:

“considers that these cases demonstrate the need for a robust system of regulation and inspection that provides protection for older people irrespective of where they receive their care and treatment and that listens to the views of people who use services and their carers; believes that the care and safety of Scotland’s older and vulnerable people must be a major priority for the Scottish Government, and welcomes the fact that there is a consensus across the Parliament to improve the integration of health and social care so that Scotland’s older people and their families can have full confidence that they will receive the best possible standard of care when they need it.”

09:41

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Meeting of the Parliament 09 June 2011

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