Fy enw i gael i'r 19th gynllunio gyda'r Gwylllusynghwyl Cymru a'r Sfortgwmwyth i 2023. Rwyf wedi cyd-dwylliant i gael i ddiwylliant. Siw Beber yn gweithio i gydag i gydag i gael i'r hyn o'r gwneud. The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 5, 6, 7 and 8 in private. Our members agreed. Thank you. The second item on our agenda is the continuation of our inquiry into female participation in sport and physical activity, and today we will be taking evidence from witnesses on behalf of organisations representing sports and public health about the broader issues affecting female participation in sport and physical activity. For this morning's session, I welcome to the meeting Kim Atkinson, chief executive officer of the Scottish Sports Association, David Ferguson, chief executive of the Observatory for Sport in Scotland, Flora Jackson, health improvement manager, Public Health Scotland and Maureen McGonagall, chief executive officer of the Scottish Women in Sport and Ilsa Wiley, lead manager of Sports Scotland, and Maureen is joining us online. We'll move straight to questions. A lack of funding for women and girls sport, particularly in comparison to men's and boys' elite sport, was identified as a challenge by many of the respondents to the committee's call for evidence in terms of pay for athletes' sponsorship prize money. I was wondering if the panel could perhaps tell the committee what the main challenges are affecting funding and opportunities for women and girls sport and physical activities and how they think that those challenges could be overcome. Who wants to kick off? Kim Atkinson, chief executive officer of the Observatory for Sport in Scotland, Flora Jackson, chief executive officer of the Observatory for Sport, Ffg. Thanks, convener and morning committee. It's really nice to see you all. I'd just like to note on the record as well the thanks from the Scottish Sports Association's members for the committee visit that they had with our members, and a mae'r cymwyneidd dros meddyw nodi, i chi'wwithiawr ddigwydd. Yn rhanau, yn ddigwydd i'r cymwyneiddiol, rydyn nesiffti nhw fyddio'r cymwyneiddiol dros mewn gwaith. Roedd mynd i ar gyfer ym ASMR. Rwy'n fwy��ad i'r cymwyneiddiol, y peth yn gwneud fyddenig,配byddai, i gael efallai. Aeth y taff ychydig i'r cymwyneiddiol, roedd unrhyw oedd oedd fwyfnydd oedd y cymwyneiddiol a fydd yn bwyêtsfawr i bobl a'r gael ei lle. I think at the moment it's seen as a cost and that I suppose if there's one thing I'd like to think as a panel we could convince you all of it and all of your colleagues is that sport needs to be seen more as an investment and it is that cultural change that we require. If we were to ever think there was a magic wand of saying there is a tool which is fun to start with, which benefits our physical health, our mental health, our social health, our educational attainment, our ability to form friendships, our ability to develop skills. At any extreme, let alone saying there's a 30 per cent reduction in all causes of mortality, 30 per cent extra enhanced wellbeing, then we'd all bite your hand off for it, but it exists, convener, and it's called sport and physical activity, and I think that's the starting point in any respect. But particularly, and Flora will be the expert in this, particularly when we're talking about an area where women's health is poorer and we've got poorer levels of participation in women and young girls, then I think this is even more important. From a specific funding point of view, I think there are two particular areas and colleagues I'm sure will touch on particular aspects in other areas. There's at a national level and there's at a local level. At a national level, most funding, as is true across the voluntary sector, so for our members who are the governing bodies for the different sports in Scotland, funding tends to be annual. It's often on a longer term agreement, but it is only annual because the investment into sport Scotland and the national agency is annual, so sport Scotland have their hands tied for that, but they can only say you'll get one year's funding. Therefore, there's a lot of staff and all the evidence sessions that you've had, if it's tremendously positive examples of where there are programmes and initiatives and systems making phenomenal differences for women and girls. A lot of that project funding will be annual, so you're therefore trying to recruit staff, retain staff, motivate staff, get people engaged, knowing that you're potentially on a year's contract, and even if you're on a longer term contract, the funding's annual, so in reality you've only got that certainty. Again, we're talking about supporting volunteers, so volunteers aren't free, but the 200,000 people who volunteer in sport in Scotland, 200,000, are supported by a small staff, again, who are trying to support that. Being able to talk about long-term funding and core funding is enormous in being able to recruit and retain the incredibly strong staff that we have across sport and physical activity in Scotland, but also making sure that there's consistency on those programmes, consistency in that delivery and consistency in that support for the volunteers. That's across the whole voluntary sector, convener. I'm sure you've heard that from others as well, but that's really true for our members. The caveat for them is that Sport Scotland has to get it to in order that it'll appeal to them. From a local authority point of view, that's one of the biggest challenges, and I'm sure the committee will have heard that from others that have talked. 90 per cent of investment in sport in Scotland goes through local authorities. My question, convener, would be whether 90 per cent of investment in sport actually goes into sport. Local authorities are facing incredibly difficult times, and none of us make any bones about that, and the trust model is the same. If you've heard from them, they've also been saying that they've got some really difficult decisions to make. They're getting less and less money from their local authority partners, and they're saying that the only way we can make ends meet is increasing cost. Who does the cost fall to? The participants. Who are the people who are participating least? Those are most deprived backgrounds. There's no accident in all of that, so there's a different conversation that we need to have about local funding and how we change some of that dynamic. David Ferguson from the Observatory for Sport in Scotland. Thank you very much for everybody taking the time to spend some time looking at this issue. It's something that we've been looking at in the Observatory for a number of years, and there are no doubts that there are real challenges, very serious challenges facing us now, in terms of poverty and inequalities, and the difficulty that is making for people to be able to access sport activity now, in a way that wasn't the case. The question around the funding, I'll ask my colleagues to come in in a minute from Public Health and Sport Scotland, because they're involved in setting the funding, but to echo what Kim has said, what the research tells us is that, over the last 20 years, we've seen continual reducing in funding of sport and physical activity, and as Kim has stated, the local authority budgets, as they have been tightened, sport and physical activity is non-standard. We're looking at satisfactory provision and words like that. There is no real compelling request of local authorities to look after sport and physical activity, so when their budgets are ring-fenced and pull tight, it's sport and physical activity, and culture gets tightened. For the last 20 years, we've seen it reduce year on year, so when you're looking at girls and women's activity particularly, we're already aware that poverty and inequalities is the biggest barrier to sport activity now in Scotland. If you're a girl or a woman living in an area of poverty, that will multiply the chances of taking part in sport, the barrier is greater, and if you have a disability, the barrier is greater again to taking part. Those are the people that are struggling, so we have councils at the moment with massive lists of facilities that they cannot run anymore because of the pressure on the last 10 to 20 years of reducing budgets. Most of the facilities that they have in these lists for closure over the next two to three years are in deprived areas, because although the football can be large, they can't charge £50 a month memberships in those areas, won't sell, swimming pools. People are struggling to be able to afford to take part in swimming pools, so it's areas of deprivation that are suffering most because those are the ones that facilities are closing in. For them, it's harder to get active. We'll come on, I'm sure, over this session to talk more specifically about girls and women, but when you talk about funding, it's the funding that's been taken out of local communities that has made it harder and harder for people across society to be able to take part in sport. I'll hand over to Flora and her colleagues. I'm sure to talk more about the funding. Flora Jackson from Public Health Scotland, thank you so much for the opportunity to share with you some of the evidence from more of a health perspective. I would probably echo some of what our colleagues here have already shared with you this morning, but I'm also mindful of the notion that we have in legislation within one of the acts that the title of has escaped me now, but it refers to the adequate provision of leisure, and it's extremely dated. That adequate provision is now, I would say, in decline. The use of the word adequate is so open to interpretation that none of us, I don't think, are particularly clear exactly to what that means, so perhaps we need to think more clearly to the future that what do we actually mean by adequate provision? What would that look like in a Scotland, particularly where we want to achieve an increase in physical activity across the population, where we want to reap the benefits of shifting people from inactive to active? Then what does that adequate provision really, really look like? I certainly would be more than happy to take part in some of those discussions if they were to happen in the future. If we look at the evidence in terms of what we do with our funding, it's very, very clear that the WHO global action plan for physical activity and also the international society for physical activity and public health make it a really, really clear case that, particularly where we have public funds, first and foremost, we should prioritise those to those who are inactive, and secondly, we need to ensure that we have opportunities that are engaging and encouraging in such a way to allow people who are active to maintain activity, so it's very much a twofold ask. I'm sorry to be going down another path. I'm looking specifically at women and girls, as opposed to general population, so how can we make sure that that funding is there for women and girls participation in sport? Indeed. My point is that, if we take that universal approach and ensure that we identify that provision and target it in that way to those who are particularly inactive, which predominantly are those who are girls and women, from the age of seven, males are more active, and that continues throughout the life course, and I'm sure that you already all know that, and that's why you're here today. I would very much encourage that we target our resources for those who require it most, which in this context would indeed be girls and women. If we can move on a little bit, and I will bring in Elsa. The committee took evidence from the media, from various broadcasters and print media, and we heard about some of the lack of coverage of women's sports in particular. I wonder if the panel has any opinions on to what extent they feel that media coverage impacts on funding for women's sport, and the opportunities that women's sport perhaps doesn't get to access that elite, particularly elite men's sport, is able to access. I don't know if you want to pick that one up, but I'll pick that one up. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much, convener, and morning to the committee. Ails Wiley from Sport Scotland, the national agency for sport. Just picking up on a couple, I'll reference the funding element from our perspective as well. Sport Scotland invests in supports and infrastructure of sport, so very much around supporting the workforce that's driving up the participation both from grassroots all the way through to performance sport. Just a couple of points around that. We do invest across Sport Scotland Institute of Sport, and that is to support our athletes. That's around our athletes that are performing within the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games, so not professional sport, which is where we see a lot of the differences within funding, prize money etc. So this is very much around athletes who are competing within Olympics and Commonwealth Games at that high end. As a stat, more females and males have represented Scotland at the most recent Birmingham Commonwealth Games. We had 52 per cent of our athletes were female taking part within the Commonwealth Games. We don't have a role within the professional sport, so with regards to the prize money and to females participating at that elite level, it's very much around the sporting pathway that we invest in. With regards to that, we measure the outputs rather than investment against areas, and we absolutely recognise that there is inequality around participation and also the on-going funding pressures within local authorities and local budgets. With regards to the media piece, it's very obvious that the coverage, especially if we're looking at print media, there is far less female coverage out there. That is completely true across other outlets as well. I think that a key thing here is that girls and young women growing up have to be able to see positive role models and influencers. That's something that we're really passionate about sport Scotland in terms of having young people as role models so that girls and young women growing up can see people within their local communities, their local clubs and their schools as role models through various programmes that we offer. We also need those positive role models at the elite athlete stage as well, and hopefully through social media you can see that that is beginning to happen. We have some very good athletes out there speaking up for girls and young women and also encouraging them to take part. Maureen Watt, I don't know if you want to come in at this point on this, and I suppose specifically what I'm looking for is about how that media coverage of women's sports can be improved and therefore drive some of the changes that we're talking about, about having positive role models who are easily accessible, that prize money is increased, that there's a parity between men and women's sport. Yes, thank you, I will and thank you for having me. It's nice to be here. In terms of equal prize money, what we have to have is a bit of creative thinking. We have to market women in sport much smarter to get the prize money in because it's all down to really sponsorship, which covers that kind of area. There's an opportunity there. In terms of media, I would agree certainly that the printed press do not cover women's sport unless there's a big event, but I would also argue how important it is that young women and girls tend to use social media as they outlet. That's where they find out things because they're used to not seeing it in the papers. They're not looking in newspapers unless newspapers actually do book up their ideas. There will be more losses there. I think that we have to look at social media, how we engage with young women and I think also what's important in engaging with parents. Parents don't see the value of young women participating in sport. They see the value of young men participating in sport, so there's a much stronger support system around young boys going into sport than there is young girls. I think that it can break down. Strangely, looking at your full agenda, I think that they're all interlinked. They'll probably come back with the same answers at a later date as well. I'm going to move on to our next theme and move to M. Carol Malkin, who's got some questions on that. I'm particularly interested to have a bit of a discussion about women and girls activity at community level. You've talked to me a bit about it. It's so important that people can exercise, take part in activity in their own communities. I'm interested to hear if there are any models out there that work well, particularly for women and girls, things that we've got examples of here in this country or even further afield. If you don't mind, that would be my first question. I don't know. Maybe Kim, would that be okay? It's a great question, and before I come to it, if that's okay, just very briefly on your point, convener. I think that Flora made the incredibly important point about exactly the focus of this, saying that if the statutory provision is for adequate provision, we've already heard in the committee's evidence and heard from the submissions of others that women are looking for higher standards around facilities and changing facilities. If adequate is the benchmark, then it's slightly higher for women. There may be no accident or something that we need to be aware of, and I'll come back to facilities in a moment. You won't be surprised to hear, Carol. I guess my question for the media would be, what is the role of the media? There was a lot of conversation around the commercial outputs and, understandably, their businesses, I understand that. Surely there's a moral responsibility as an educator to be saying in the previous chief medical officer's guidelines, because they were reviewed recently in Flora, can provide an update on that, if needs be, I'm sure. Only 4 per cent of the population knew the chief medical officer's guidelines of how healthy you have to be to be active. So that's only 4 per cent, on the assumption that it's 4 per cent of women within that as well. So mothers aren't being as active as we need them to be. Well, the key indicator of how physically active a young girl will be is the physical activity, inspiration, i.e. participation of their mother and the interest of their father. So going back to the point about the media, yes, it's about coverage and yes, it's about sponsorship and it's all those things that you mentioned, convener, but it's also saying, well actually, we need to be inspiring men and women to know how they can be parents that will inspire a young girl to be active. So I really don't want that point to be lost because I think is the role of the media and that is really important. From a community sport point of view, I think, and again, part of this will be specific to women and girls and part of this will be systematic, systemic challenges that there are in sport at the moment. Community access to community facilities is one of the largest challenges facing not only sport but the voluntary sector as a whole. So sports clubs, the 13,000 of them represent a third of the voluntary sector. If you add in then the uniformed organisations, youth organisations and other organisations around culture, arts, et cetera, that's two thirds of the voluntary sector. And they are saying the biggest issue they are facing is the recruitment of volunteers and its access to community facilities, both of which are particularly relevant for women. So that's a massive challenge and within that, I would say, the school of state is a particular challenge within that. So again, women are sometimes challenged around confidence in going into facilities they don't know and not all women are as confident in sport and physical activity as we'd like them to be. There are safety challenges, as you've all heard, around accessing facilities, late night travel, being able to actively travel as they'd like to. And there's a particular barrier of time that is exacerbated for women even more than it is for men, particularly those from deprived communities and single mums who are the least active. What's the solution there? A local facility, a facility that you know, a facility that's hopefully welcoming and it's something that's in your local area. A school perhaps might seem like a particular solution. So we talk about access to the school of state a lot, but I think it's even more relevant in this context. The last research that was done was by Sport Scotland in 2014 and showed that actually the school of state is not well used. It's open, but it's not well used. And David, I know that was something you talked about in a previous session about saying actually this is a nub of an issue. It's an issue for sport, but I think it's even more exacerbated for women. And similarly around PE as well, so no role modelling has come up an awful lot, but actually we're looking at a decline in PE teachers. From a peripatetic and from permanent PE teachers, particularly in primary schools, we're looking at a situation where there actually are fewer PE teachers than there have been. And from primary schools we're looking at a position where teachers are having to do ever more. Well surely as well as your parents, your teachers are some of your first role models. Do we have enough PE teachers? Do we have enough female PE teachers who are actually providing that positive educational experience for young people who are then hopefully leaving school thinking sport and physical activity is a choice I want to make throughout life and I have the competence and competence to choose the sport and physical activity I'd like to take part in. If we can nail those slightly differently, then I think we're in a different place for clubs being able to pick up a mantle for coaches for volunteers to be able to work that through. But the two limiting factors for many, many clubs that have waiting lists of which female sports clubs are a huge part of that, access to facilities and coaches and volunteers to support that. We know that up to the age of the last sort of Scottish household figures and the last research that we did at the USS on those figures to any depth with 2019 showed that up to the age of 8 to 10 girls were actually more active than boys in sport and physical activity. Very similar, very close, but from 10, 11, 11, 12 on and we'll hear different figures here about when that decline starts but it starts at that point, that transition, 11, 12 and it starts to go down and it's more steep for girls than it is for boys so there are more girls dropping out of sport. Now we have one of the steepest declines in Europe of sport activity, children dropping out of sport activity. One of the things, when we talk about what can you do about that in the communities, we talk about, convener, a lot of the general statistics because that's where it comes from, it's not one simple solution, it's not about going in and saying let's create this intervention and you've seen some great ones, you've seen what's been happening in Dunfermin and others, lots of these all over the country. They may not be there when you next go and look at them because a lot of them are short term because the funding's not there so you might see another one when you go, great, loose, brilliant, springing girls in and women, really good but it's not funded long term so many of them are reliant on different sources of funding, different pots because we don't have that national strategic approach to making sure that community sport activity is invested in as a key route to health and wellbeing and much wider benefits. The Dutch we've looked at, we've looked at a number of models around Europe and one of the things the Dutch did to try and address that drop out and it's a bit of what we've heard and Flora mentioned earlier about focusing on inequalities so it's focusing on where that money goes and what you want back from it. The Dutch decided we're no longer going to fund sports across communities just randomly, just give them money, there you go as a sport you're doing a good job. We're actually going to look for real comeback now so we're going to look for benefits and health and wellbeing, we're going to look for work that's done in deprived areas, we're going to deliberately target girls and women in communities because we know the figures are not good enough, we know the drop out is too big so how do we do that? Let's get in, they had 360 municipalities, something like that across the Netherlands so they went into each one and said okay we're going to bring health and wellbeing together, education, sport, business together to actually look at how we fund sport and they've only done this in the last 10 years it's a fairly new programme sport agreement that they now call it in the Netherlands. The examples there are that they've said to a hockey club, a football club or whatever, you can carry on, not a problem, a golf club, you will no longer receive government funding if you're just a private club and it's just for box, that's fine carry on, not a problem but don't come to the government looking for money for changing rooms, money for kit, any of that kind of thing. You must now tick these boxes, if you're going to receive government funding going forward you must be ticking boxes around making sure there is a good proportion of activities for girls and women, you know where people are coming from deprived backgrounds and you're making sure that they're welcome and it's affordable if not free activity because we're going to help with the funding to make sure that facility is looked after, to make sure you don't have to worry about maintenance which is one of the biggest problems, maintenance and travel for sports clubs now, huge costs. As a government, national level, working with local municipalities, we'll make sure that those are looked after but what you've got to do for us is make sure you tick the boxes for health and wellbeing, for poverty and inequalities, getting to people who are not active and I spoke to politicians across there about it, I spoke to civil servants, asked how it went, said the first year or two was really difficult because there are lots of football and sports clubs saying you're putting us out of business, we've flown the flag, great football teams, hockey teams. Suddenly you're taking the money away from us, they said the key point was we had a very strong health and welfare minister who stood by what she had brought in and said this is really important to us, so for a couple of years they had a lot of flack in the media but they stuck by it and they said we're now seeing the differences, we're now seeing clubs coming to us saying okay how do we tick that box and they said okay disability is not a bit of ramp at the front of your facility, that's not making this disability friendly. It's about having people with disabilities on your committee, on your board, streaming the programmes and they've seen a real change over the last year so when you're talking about case studies there's an example, there's lots of great examples in Scotland of where it happens, it's just not really joined up and pieced up as part of a supported nationally and then funded properly, nationally and locally. Thanks very much for that feedback, I wonder just how do you see the sports governing bodies feeding in to just what we're talking about there about community sport, is it something that we do well or that we need to do better in terms of community sport? Thank you very much Carol, I think with regards to club and community sport we obviously invest our money through governing bodies to support them to deliver the participation activities and this works hand in hand with our active schools network as well so again that's one of the flagship programmes for sport Scotland and that is very much around developing and supporting the delivery of physical activity in sport within local communities tied in to the schools. So we have a network of over 400 managers and coordinators associated with every school within Scotland and again they're working on that school to community and school to club pathway as well. Across the governing bodies we ensure that they're embedding their equality, diversity and inclusion within their sports and there's models coming out in and around how they're doing that with specifics to girls and young women. For example walking netball, so netball Scotland initiative where they're trying to encourage girls and women's participation and coming back so bounce back to netball walking netball is initiatives to really draw and we're learning and listening to the communities who have not been taken part. Scottish athletics they've got community strides so again a job Scotland initiative whereby they're really working closely with the community based organisations to see how they can get more girls and women active within specific communities and that one is around women from ethnic minority backgrounds. So we do have some examples there coming from governing bodies. I would also look to draw on our community sport hub models. We've got over 200 community sport hubs within Scotland and again they're working with clubs in their area to do exactly what David's describing there, bringing different sports together and all working with each other. A lot of this comes back to the knowledge and research that we know that especially growing up girls and young women want to be listened to. They want to be consulted and asked in and around the activities that they're interested in and through active schools and one of our national programmes fit for girls. This is very much around tackling the barriers to try and combat the teenage drop off. So as we know from the figures they do show that steep decline and we are trying to give girls within their own setting around school and communities the confidence at that younger age so they've got the healthier attitudes to participation. So even when they get to that teenage year group and they are maybe dropping out of sport or they don't feel confident if we can try and change these attitudes at a younger age then that should hopefully help to keep girls and women having that healthier approach to physical activity and continuing their journey then to participate throughout their life stage. And we know that there's various life stages within girls and women but also into women as they're getting older as well of all of the barriers that women face to participation. So key is that consultation and building that self-esteem and self-confidence of women and girls and how we can do that if we are all working together. So this is about working with our partners at Education Scotland through the school model of PE, physical activity and sport. It is around working with community groups and really listening and being open to that consultation. I have two other people who want to come in with supplementaries on this theme. I'll come to Emma Harper and then to whoever. Thanks, thanks, convener. Good morning everybody. It was to pick up on what Kim was saying about the facilities and availability. When Gillian Martin was our previous convener, she talked about in Iceland that basically they would hand the keys over to the kids at the school because they trusted them just to get on with it and access the facilities. Now we don't do that here but is that something that you think we should be progressing or should we? Do we have any data about the use of the school estate after four o'clock in the afternoon and is that a model that we should be pursuing looking at other countries? Because David mentioned Denmark and what they are doing and I'm looking here at what they're doing with the Gina Davis Institute in America about encouraging young women into sport and athletics. So we can certainly take best practice from other countries, shouldn't we? Isn't that what we should be pursuing? 100% Emma, I couldn't be more supportive of your point. That's exactly it. At the end of the day I guess that irony as I see it and apologies if we're oversimplifying it. The school estate is a community facility so it's a facility that is run by the local authority with community money on behalf of the community. The community can't get in, Emma. If that doesn't strike me as a complete irony then I'm really not sure what is. Exactly. There are models where those things work and a lot of research has shown that, and let's be very clear, this is that outdoor school estate, not just the indoor school estate, is that if things are open, outdoor playing fields and pitches are open, people don't break in. They respect them a little bit more, there's less vandalism, there's less break-ins, that kind of thing. As I say, this is about the whole voluntary sector, and again, of which women are a huge part in that. Again, if you're talking about guides, brownies, that network and the other uniformed organisations, there's a huge part, a physical activity is taking part for women within that network. It's one of the biggest barriers. There are huge financial pressures, as we've all talked about in local authorities. Accessing the school estate is difficult, there's planning issues, but more often than not now it's cost that is the challenge. I've talked about this in the 13 years that I've been in this post-M, and I'm still not 100 per cent clear on what that is. If there was an ask that we could make of the committee, it would be further to be an inquiry, which is cross-committee. This committee, the local government committee and the education committee to say, what's the problem? I don't think any of us know. It's a conversation that we have routinely across sport. Why can nobody get into the school estate? Why is it so expensive? What can that different model look like? Again, it's particularly important for women and girls in that area and environment that they know. I thought Kate from Living Streets had some phenomenal examples about planning and planning for women and why that is so important. Again, I think that plays into the power of the school estate. It's availability, it's access, but it's also the cost of that, and it's incredibly challenging. The last research that I understand was done in 2014, which showed that a lot of it's open, but it's very rarely used in comparison to the space that could or should be available. I think that we want to understand more about that. Thank you, convener. I want to pick up on these questions specifically for Ailsa and Maureen. Ailsa, you mentioned the various life stages in a woman, and it's not just about teenage drop-off. Maureen has a blog about her website. I think that we're still on theme 2. Yes, I know. We're talking about funded organisations. There's an awful lot of inspiring women in our communities that are setting up businesses to help and tackle the gap that's there for women not taking part in sport. I'm looking for some feedback from yourselves. What are you doing? They're not looking for funding, they're looking for access, they're looking for support. What are you doing to help those women who are helping women in the community get back to activity? If I pick this one up, thank you. There's various things going on. Across the sporting workforce in the sector that we invest in, we're very much working with our local authority partners to be hand in hand with the community organisations and to really understand what they're bringing. From a national point of view, we can highlight and raise awareness and we do everything that we can across our social media channels in order to raise that profile and help the understanding around profiling role models. When I speak about role models, I'm not speaking just about elite athletes here. This is very much about role models in your community. We do a lot of work around young leaders in sport and we see bigger numbers coming forward from our girls and young women within schools and community organisations than we do in our male counterparts when we advertise any of the roles in our round leadership. It's a very big part of what we do. We've got the themes throughout the year. Active Girls is one of our themes at Sport Scotland and we've worked with the Scottish Government on their Scottish Women in Sport week as well. This is very much about using the positive role models that we see locally. It isn't about investment or funding but it is about raising awareness of what they are offering within that space and trying to work together to help local authorities make these connections. Can we get Mr Gohani's microphone on please? Thank you. David, I'd like to ask—previous evidence from Kirsty Garner of Glasgow Live suggested that sports clubs and organisations have a good code of conduct and good governance. I'm sure we all agree with that. In fact, all organisations should have that. Do you specifically provide guidance and information on what that should look like? I know that every organisation is different but, for example, if these things happen, you need to say where people can go to get help, so a fact sheet of help? Personally not. Our focus is really on the research and the data and what that tells us. We haven't provided a fact sheet or a guide sheet in terms of where people should go. I know that there is a lot of that available. Sports Scotland and SSA have guidance in that regard as well. There is a lot of organisation to do that. Our focus is really on the research. I would say, following up on what Elsa said, that— Sorry if I just pause you there. The question is very specific but there are organisations that have that information. I want to talk about a report that was published, a paper that came out via Aberdeen Grammar Rugby Club, which is related to some of the very specific physiological differences in female anatomy. There is no matter how much women train, they are much more susceptible to brain injury and have less neck muscle mass. If you watch some of the real physical sports that we take part in, whether it be football, rugby or hockey, they are expected to perform in the same way as men. However, there is a much greater impact for danger of injury and significant injury when they take the full impact of some of, whether it be a tackle or a free hit. I am just wondering what is being done within the organisations to mitigate and support women who clearly present differently from some of those injuries, as men do, to make sure that we are not causing any unnecessary harm. It is not unintended harm. I am not sure if we want to take that one first. Public Health Scotland, perhaps? I will happily come in. It is probably something outwith the remit and scope of work currently within Public Health Scotland. It is something that perhaps colleagues within the Institute of Sport may be better placed to advise on, particularly with the sport science expertise that they have there, in the similar way that concussion guidance and such has been developed recently as well with some of the health bodies. I think that I would hit. Pass over to somebody else then. Just to echo that, it is absolutely not my area of expertise, but I know my colleagues within the Sport Scotland Institute of Sport. The medics team around that are working with the world organisations and federations across various sports. For example, Flora just mentioned rugby there, so the International World Rugby Federation is looking at the concussion guidelines and the differences between the females and males in that space as well. It is my understanding, as I do not know if you know, that there are intended to change these concussion guidelines, but they are still going to be the same whether you are irrespective of your sex. What I am looking for is that perhaps we need to have some guidance that is specific for female sex because we do present differently and we have lots of other things going on, hormonal and stuff that all... Are you aware of anything specifically around that? I know that Sport Scotland Institute of Sport have set up a female athlete performance group and they are absolutely researching and looking into various different agendas at the moment within that. We know that there is a lot of research done around injuries to the knee, for example, so ACL injuries are more predominant within females and that is something that colleagues from our medical world are looking into at the moment. Maybe Maureen would like to come in on that as well. Thank you for that. I really appreciate the question because it is something that we have been thinking about for a long while. I think that for so often and so long research has been done on men and they have cut it down to size to fit women, but we know that women's bodies are much more complex and they need specific research. There is a lot being done and I met recently a gentleman who is involved in the concussion research. It was interesting to see that it is not just what happens with the impact, but it also depends on whether you are menstruating at the time, so in terms of how that impacts can be different. I think that we have to start an education programme here to let coaches know how to deal with women because in terms of training when you are menstruating, going into menopause as well, there are still some women out there running and training that need to learn how to deal with their bodies. I think that there is a big piece of work to be done. I know that UWS is doing a lot. Their staff is involved in a lot of research. Some of it is quite innovative. For me, everything seems to be there, but nobody is pulling it together. There is advice out there, there is research out there, but it has been done in isolation and I think that perhaps we need to look at how we can pull these things together and everyone can benefit from the knowledge that is gained. I am certainly recognising the ACL injuries sitting here in pain from decades of hockey. What are sports governing bodies and organisations doing to help women to take part in sport later on in life specifically? We do hear that they are pushed out, whether it be through having a family, work-life pressures, the man gets to go off to his fivocide, go off to golf. What are we doing to really help women to take part in sport and activity later in life, particularly during the menopause when the osteoporosis will start becoming a challenge as well? I am sure that, in research spaces, it would be really helpful if the committee was to recommend that. You have heard from Maureen about that there have been a lot of research out there, but it is all over the place. It is something that we have been trying to change, the observatory for sport and trying to pull that together. We are seeing more. I have been coaching girls hockey for 12 years now as well, girls aged 11 to 18. A lot of my understanding of girls and the challenges that they go through has come from the WellHQ. You heard from Baz Moffat last week who talked a lot about that and from Sport Scotland and the work that they do. I would say that there is more information there for young coaches and other coaches than there ever has been. I have been aware of coming through in terms of the child safeguarding courses, the Sport Scotland courses that you go on. There is more there than there has been, but I think that the research is still, we do not have a lot of research in Scotland and that is something that we are pushing for at the OSS, so we would love you to support that because we need more of it. You had mentioned that we need really strong role models. My question is around how do we make sure that we do get strong role models coming forward, whether that is through athletes, coaches or anyone that is involved with female sport? How do we do that? We have got it cracked yet and that is why we are having these discussions today. From some of the programmes that we have been involved in over the years, there is definitely a bigger focus and emphasis on young people and young leaders. We really see the benefit and impact that young people make as a contribution in sport, getting them involved in opportunities of leadership roles, which reflect in their areas of interest. They are also role models for others. In the phrase of, you cannot be, what you cannot see is so relevant when we are looking at women and girls' participation in sport. A few of the national programmes that I have spoken about are for school-aged children and young people. Overwhelmingly, we get a higher percentage of girls stepping forward to be part of those programmes and to be those roles, which I think is really positive. I hope that that is having a knock-on effect in years to come, where they have the confidence and self-esteem to be our future leaders and coaches in the sporting system. It is critical that they have that confidence to take those roles. A lot of the research has told us that when women see job adverts, they need to meet 100 per cent of the criteria, whereas men will go for jobs when they meet 60 per cent of the criteria. There is definitely something in and around being able to give girls that confidence, raise their self-esteem as they grow up and come through life, so that when they are at the ages where they can be given back and taken on roles, they are stepping forward to take them on. We also have a female leadership programme whereby we are identifying and aspiring future leaders in the sporting sector. We help to invest and support places so that they can go on the leadership academy. That is to try and get our future leaders of governing bodies, co-positions, to give girls and women coming through the sporting system more confidence so that they are going to aspire to be on those roles in the future. I think that it is a great question. I saw the great video that you saw before one of your other sessions, and I think that it is an interesting question as to what is a role model, because I am assuming that they were to your student, which is amazing. I think that role models are everywhere, and I know that we sit in women and girls in sport week ourselves. I feel incredibly lucky to be in this position because I see phenomenal female role models everywhere I go. The challenge is that people do not get the profile that other people actually see them. In the committee evidence session, you have seen some tremendous female role models and male role models who are incredibly supportive of women's sport. They do exist. That is the first part. The second part is working out where they exist and what that could look like. Leadership is a hugely important part, as Ailsa was saying, in supporting that.  I think that there is also something that I mentioned to PE teachers. I think that that is a really strong role model, not just women's female PE teachers but also male PE teachers in terms of showing that support for women. Coaches is one that we come back to often and there are more male coaches than there are female coaches. There are more male volunteers in sport than there are women in sport. I would suggest that one of the underpinning parts again is time. One of the main reasons people say that they do not volunteer is that they do not have time. The least active people are single mothers in deprived areas and women just generally. That is no accident, I imagine, in terms of that. One of our big asks in that is how do you give people time? Where do you spend most of your time at work, for the most part, for a lot of people? It is something that we discussed with the committee in the last inquiry, saying that we are pushing forward an idea of a wellbeing employer. What is a wellbeing employer? It might be somebody who gives four days at working week, as I know you have raised before, Gillian. It is about an employer that gives time for their staff to be physically active. It gives them time to volunteer. That would benefit everybody, but I would like to think that the people that might benefit most from that are women. I know again that Ailey gave some great evidence from Scottish student sport where you look at the student network and say that there are more women members of student clubs than there are men. Then they go into working environments where they work nine to five or there is not that same flexibility. Women now go into more caring roles and things where we create systems that are quite difficult for people to be as active as they would like. Maybe we would have more female coaches and female volunteers as role models if women had time. Let us not make cost a barrier to giving that time. Let us make employers say that that also helps their wellbeing. At a time of really difficult recruitment market you might find it easier to recruit and retain staff. I think that there is a huge part in there. There is also about men being incredibly positive role models. They are half the population. They are an incredibly important part. I know that this has been raised with the committee as well and I know one of the discussions around Andy Murray. There will be other incredibly strong male role models who are saying that my mum was an incredibly positive indicator. Whether they happen to be as a crack at a coach's duty Murray is a different question, but they are incredibly important role models within that. I think that we need to provide people with time, but we also need to talk about where we are profiling those role models. We do a bit of work in women and girls and sport week each year where we try and profile amazing women doing amazing things in sport. We will share it with the committee if that is helpful, but we did some videos of women who have received honours through sport just recently. Incredible women who have changed access rights in Scotland. Across sport and physical activity, we are probably all the most proud of it, because we have world leading access rights. Some really strong women drove that forward and are still continuing to drive that forward in many different spaces. Where are we all championing that in our communities and in general life? We need to talk up more and that is a role that I feel the media needs to play at a strong part in. We exist when we want more of them, but we also need to make it a place that is comfortable. If I am a role model to one person and what I do then that works. How can we make it easier for people to find those role models that will inspire them? I would like to pick up something that Kim said about working with boards to bring diversity. David is sitting there and he will clearly back up the fact that our research a couple of years ago is showing that that is not the case. I cannot see major improvements in the past couple of years. It is important that we look at that. Part of the statement in the reports in our website is that some governing bodies do not see the benefit of diversity on the boards and that is shocking. I think that a lot of the issues that we are going to discuss today could be helped by having a much diverse and inclusive board who understand the issues and who are there when the decisions are made to ensure that everyone gets a fair crack at the whip. That is really important. We still continue to fund sports that do not have diversity on their boards. If we have that strength but we can change things and it is a financial strength, we have to use that to the benefit. Until we get diversity and inclusion on the boards, we will not solve the problem. One of the things that we are doing from that report is that we are working with Sam H and we are doing a woman in sports leadership course. We have had a pilot scheme for three months and we have worked with young people. It is for young people, by young people. We have done the research on it. The major issues are self-confidence and mental health issues. That is the top two things that came out. We have to build young women up before we can build up role models because giving young women the title of role models actually puts a burden on the shoulders. To start working collectively to create this army of young women who are fit and healthy, confident, it has to come from the top. The top gets the culture right and that emanates down. We can see a change until that happens. I am not sure we will. If you can very briefly, because I have other people who want to come in on this. If anybody else wants to come in on what Maureen said about diversity and making sure that it goes wider, what are organisations doing about targets and action plans and making sure that we really get into diversity? I am, because I think that it is a tremendously important point, Evelyn. I am going to disagree slightly with Maureen, certainly not in that it is important, but in the work that governing bodies have been doing and that is work that we do with them through our own board for sport programme, the only programme that exists in that space in the voluntary sector and the support that sportscotland provides. We do an annual survey of our members and the average is 35 to 65 in terms of percentage male female. I know that the aspiration is 50-50. The average size of a sports board is 9, so unless we are going to cut somebody in half, 50-50 is quite difficult. Usually sports governing bodies carry one vacancy at any time, so 35-65 is a pretty good split and represents where they are. Yes, it could be the other way, 35-65, but we are in a position a number of years ago where that was not the case. So governing bodies are taking this incredibly importantly and are very, very passionate about it. What Maureen said that I absolutely agree with is the point is confidence. So I do not agree with quotas and targets. Something I feel incredibly passionate about, my first board role was on the sportscotland board but I was 22. So women in governance is something I have been very passionate about for a very, very long time. But it takes confidence to actually put yourself forward and it takes a little bit of time to actually build that up. So throwing women into those positions is not, I think, a helpful space. What we do through our own board for sport programme is trying to identify women who have an enthusiasm to do that. And we talk with them and we interview the wrong word. We have discussions with them about what they want to be, where we could match them with somebody. We are looking at setting up a budding and a mentoring scheme so that there are opportunities for women to get involved. And exactly as Ailsa was saying, women are saying, oh gosh, I've got nothing to offer. And you chat with them, I had a conversation with women exactly last week. Phenomenal women, very senior in a very, very strong number of very high profile businesses. She's saying, but what would I have to offer? It's a very female question. I'm saying, are you kidding? All of our governing bodies would bite their hand off to have you. Well gosh, I'm really not sure what I would have to offer. Well, would you like to have a conversation with somebody? I'm happy to be there with you. Here are some of the types of questions that you might need to ask. So we need to work to provide women with that confidence and that's work that we're doing across the sector. Quotas, not going to be helpful and I feel would push things back. Developing confidence, developing skills, two sessions, we're running next week, being volunteers week, we're running one with the Scottish Government and one with the financial sector to say, this is how people can volunteer, this is how you can get involved in boards and there are many ways that you can do that. That I think is the key. I'm going to move to David Torrance. Maureen, you just want one minute. If you could ask that answer very, very briefly Maureen, please. If I could just add one thing, what the governing bodies have to do is ensure that the space that they're bringing women into is a welcoming space. Normally they take them in to take a box and then it becomes very difficult. Women go out and then it breeds that kind of thought process. I'm not welcome there. Why would I bother my busy woman? So we need to look at these things a lot clearer and make sure that the space is welcoming for women. David. I've spent the morning looking at your social media sites, your Twitter and your Facebook. The number of followers that you've got is probably a passion of mine because that is the easiest way to communicate with anybody now, no matter what we try to do. Especially with TikTok, to encourage young women into sport and leadership roles. I also touched on it in our very first statement at its committee about influencers. What are you, as governing bodies, doing to use influencers and use sites like TikTok and things like that to connect with young women out there and encourage them into sport? Am I taking this one? So not an expert within social media, but we do know the importance of influencers and realistic influencers for our girls and young women out there. In terms of sport Scotland, a lot of our social media that we're putting out across our channels is driven from consultation with our young people. We have a national young people sports panel, which is 20 young people out of the 20 that we've got for this current two-year period, 14 of them are females. Again, echoing my previous points where we are seeing a lot of girls stepping forward from our schools and communities in Scotland to take on these roles. Our young people sports panel hosts our sports hour every month, where we go out on Twitter for an hour at the beginning of every month, the first Monday of the month. We talk about sporting issues, current issues that are happening out there around physical activity and sport. Again, they're feeding back to us that they want to be these role models out there. We give them that confidence and we speak to them and listen to them. That is building them up to then showcase what other young people could be doing with regards to that. We also see from the performance point of view female athletes stepping forward. Hannah Miley, Eilish Macaulain, Scottish female athletes out there who are performing on the world stage. They are talking about the issues that girls and young women face throughout their life and a lot of the challenging issues that are barriers. They are speaking about periods and the fact that that really challenges them when they are competing and they are competing internationally in competition. For me, it's a positive move in the right direction. We haven't got this right at the moment and we know the power of social media. We can only see that as it's going to become more and more prominent through the years. It is an area that we need to take seriously, but certainly from our experience involving young people within what's going out and what's going on in the channels, it's certainly a step in the right direction. We are going to move to inequalities and to Gillian Mackay, who is going to lead off in questions here. The point has been made about the need to increase visibility of disabled women in sports. How can that be achieved with regards to women with hidden disabilities, including people with mental health conditions? Can I maybe pick on Kim first? Briefly, in terms of your point about social media and influencers, I'm very rudely going to turn the table, David, and say that October is Women and Girls in Sport Week. First week in October. You'll all be getting an invitation from us, as every MSP will, to make a video of why sport and physical activity is important to you and why that's important for women and girls. I would invite each of the committee convener, if that's okay, to support that. You are all influencers. I'll bet you all have an awful lot of social media followers. I'm actually not joking. I think that's incredibly important. The most watched videos that we had that we made, as the SSA, were staff of six, so there's not a lot of us. Our ones on the role models of a woman in being physically active to her daughter and the role models of a father for a daughter. Food for thought, perhaps? In terms of disabilities, I'm delighted that you called in, and absolutely rightly so, Ling Glen from Scottish Disabilities Sport. Scottish Disabilities Sport do an amazing, amazing amount of work, an amazing award-winning work in a very small space, and by small space, I mean small budget, in trying to move that forward. I know that the messaging that they continually put forward is around inclusion, but inclusion that we have to be quite specific about it. When we say it's about everybody, that sometimes is lost about disability being part of that. I think that there's a very specific focus that we need to take, and you're right about what people see or don't see as disability, and I think that's a challenge. But it is about their sports inclusion model. It is about being able to work to the guidance that they provide, which they provide across all governing bodies. They provide support across governing bodies to try and say, look, this is how things can be more inclusive, this is how games can be adapted, this is why PE is so important. So it took them longer than anyone would have hoped to embed their award-winning training programme into every education provider to say that, actually, they need to take part in their disability inclusion training, to make sure that every PE teacher actually knows how to support somebody with a disability as they go in as a teacher and then as a PE teacher. Everybody that's been on that course says that there are better teachers as a result of it, not a better PE teacher, but just a better teacher as going on that course. So it took a long time for them to get that roll-out. Again, trying to get support from partners was difficult, but it's incredible what they do, but it's then looking and saying, well, actually, what does that mean then for health professionals now? So if we're working with education really successfully, what can that mean for health professionals to say you're seeing somebody with a disability? Whatever that may be, here are ways that you could be active, here are ways that you can get involved and here are different community avenues and opportunities where you could find benefit from that. So I couldn't support more the incredible work that Scottish disability sport do and more power to their elbow to say, well, actually, they're doing great work with their Goga programme in Tayside. I think that was one of the evidence papers that came in as well, saying, well, we just need to provide more support to them to be able to roll that out. While we would all talk about sport and physical activity changing lives, Scottish disability sport will talk about sport and physical activity saving lives. That's the level of importance of that. Absolutely, thank you. We also obviously encourage sport and figures to be more open about stress, anxiety and depression and I think we've come a long way in that. Obviously, people with those mental health conditions may not necessarily come under the Scottish disability sport side of things but still will participate in both organised sport and other physical activity as well. How do we support people with specific diagnosis better? In particular, I'm thinking people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders about which there's less understanding and awareness. How do we ensure that they're welcome in sport and that they're understood by team mates, coaches and others to ensure that they can get the best support out of what they're doing? And David's nodding, so I might come to David if he's got thoughts. Nodding, just agreeing with everything that you're saying. As I said earlier, as a coach, and I've been a coach for 30 years with youth at different levels, and it's been girls for the last 12 years, two girls of my own, which is often the way you get brought into coaching. And I know that sport Scotland do a lot around this, so I'll probably hand over to Elsa. I would just say that on the flip side, I don't think, and being involved in sport for a long time, I don't think there's a recognition or enough of a recognition across Scottish Parliament, Scottish Government of the value of sport and physicality to mental health. So there's a lot of discussions I hear about how we treat mental health, treatment for mental health, and yet there's been such a decline in extracurricular sport and drama and music that the mental health, it's no surprise to many of us who are working with children that mental health and children, teenagers particularly, is really struggling, is really under pressure, because we've taken away an awful lot of the things that helped them to escape that pressure of the classroom or escape the pressure of the study. A lot of that has gone, and as a result, I mean I work with girls all the time and I have discussions with girls about their mental health to the extent they're happy to come and talk to me about that. I think that's really important as coaches that we allow ourselves and educate ourselves on how we do that, but I have girls and parents, particularly mothers, saying to me regularly every season, I've not seen my daughter in such a happy place as this when she comes off, comes off the bus, haven't had a trip away in a Saturday morning to play hockey. She's not on her phone all morning, she's not bothered about social media, she comes back and has had a real escape. I haven't seen her like this for months, if not years, because I see her, she says it's fine, goes into her room, I don't see her forever. The sport provides something that I think we've taken for granted and we really need the help of politicians and others in Scotland to start to put that more at the centre of mental health and wellbeing. Sorry, Elsa. Thank you very much, Dylan. With regards to our vision as an active Scotland, where everyone benefits from sport, so absolutely our commitment to inclusion underpins everything that we're doing. How we're making, bringing that to life and realising that, we're working with a range of national partners and some of them you've had here to listen to, so our partner SDS, SABH, we're in. We're just in the process of having a partnership with Enabled Scotland, so again getting more people with a disability into the workplace. What those partnerships are bringing is that understanding of the issues and barriers that are faced with people with disabilities. It means that we are working on training programmes to upskill our workforce and raising that profile and awareness of the different issues that do face people taking part. Some of that in real terms means that for our active schools network, for example, we had a bespoke SDS inclusive practice programme designed, so that's a training programme that our upskill and our workforce to better understand how they could be more inclusive with how they are going about organising and coordinating their activities locally. As David pointed out, we are aware that coaches are now the front-facing people and they are the ones that are listening and hearing from young people themselves who are talking about a lot of these issues. So that upskilling of the workforce, not just a professional invested post but also our voluntary network of coaches is absolutely key and that's what we're working with some of our partners on and around the training that we can put on for them. Maureen Wart's time to come in. It's just a quick sentence. Research recently from women in sport UK unfortunately have to bring up the C-word Covid. They said that teenage girls are experiencing worrying mental health issues and report being less happy, more anxious and increasingly dissatisfied with their appearance. The pandemic has in many instances amplified those issues and I think that's something that we haven't discussed and I'm quite sure that you've discussed it many times but I think that the issues around those unseen health issues is very important and I think that it's something that we should maybe delve into a little bit deeper in the future. Three actions, if that's okay on specific that point. The first is two hours, two periods of PE, FAB, not for S5S6. Arguably the most stressful point of any child's life and again key drop-off point for women. They don't have the mandated number of hours of PE so that would be one action. The second one would be there seems a bit of a paradox in terms of we talk about equality or underpinning everything that we do and we'll all say that because it's absolutely right and it's true but we measure on numbers. So we say how many coaches have you got, how many members have you got, how many people were at that session. Well actually some of the types of people, the challenges that you were talking about Gillian might take a little bit more time and more encouragement and a different kind of pathway but if we're measuring on numbers you can't underpin within equalities. So sport structurally needs to change and that's a conversation with government about changing what it is that we measure to make sure we are actually able to focus on equalities and not saying but we also need to work on numbers. The third part would be exactly as you say and you know mental health and know being a passion of yours as well convener is saying sport and physical activity impacts across every national outcome that I can think of and every sustainable development goal I can think of. But if you look at the national outcome it's sport and physical activity sorry it's health and sport and if you look into the detail of it it's health. So we on behalf of our members will be responding to the consultation on that saying what we want and what we would very much welcome the committee support on is a new national outcome that is sport and physical activity. Because of the contribution it makes you know if we're talking about wellbeing it being the heart of the national performance framework as it says it is well is there another activity that supports physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing and social wellbeing more than sport and physical activity. So that will be our submission on behalf of members and we would very much welcome the committee support on that and I think that provides somewhere where we're saying people being physically active and women and girls being physically active is everybody's responsibility but actually something everybody is accountable for in a different way. So you just touched on the issue of the data picture in Scotland and do you believe or do the fellow panellists believe that this is sufficient to measure female participation in sport? Is it a form of data that is collected centrally, collated and analysed? Is there any opportunity to further improve this? I mean really are we making informed decisions? How does this data look to you and how could it be improved? The objective for sport in Scotland was created in 2016 because of the huge void in data and research that was happening in Scotland around sport and physical activity and the linking of that to wider health and wellbeing issues. So it's not about looking at how many people are taking part in sport. Kim has mentioned that and that is how it's monitored in Scotland, so sports. We know that sports governing bodies, some of the figures, a lot of the figures, and this isn't pretty critical of them, but they're nonsense figures, some of the figures for participation. Because a lot of them are having to guess, they're having to look at how many people come to festivals, they're looking to tighten them up and improve them but that's how Sports Scotland monitors how many children have you got, how many coaches have you got, how many are you putting through. So a lot of the figures are not very accurate, but there isn't proper research carried out of sport. We have the Scottish Health Survey and the Scottish Health Survey. Other countries have national sport surveys to understand properly exactly who's taking part, how many people are taking part, how irregular that is and they look at things like the barriers to activity and what it is that are the main issues. Tansy, your question, we're nowhere near the amount of data and insight, both quantitative and qualitative research that we need and that many other countries rely on. So a lot of the surveys you see and a lot of the quotes you hear from women in sport, from Sport England that English data or UK data with heavy English cohorts, we really need a significant improvement and funding of research and data in Scotland, there's no doubt about that. Thanks for that. I think Maury McGonagall was nodding, I don't know if you want to offer a viewer, just affirming your agreement. Absolutely nodding, absolutely nodding in agreement with David because I think it's important to understand where we are and a lot of the information we get does come from women in sport UK so I would second what David's saying. Is there any further? I think there's a question on data and monitoring so it's the old adage of you measure what you value and you value what you measure and I think Floor will be closest to the Scottish household survey and Scottish health survey parts but I think there's an evidence base of what we're trying to prove so governing bodies and others that are in receipt of public funding are rightly accountable for public funding, make no bones about that and nobody will compare about that but we monitor and measure everything to the millionth degree to the point that actually there are times I worry we're focusing more on monitoring and measuring than we are on actual delivery because we've got to tick very many sets of boxes that we've got all this data and we've got this other thing. I'm not saying we don't need data but I think there's been clear on what is it that we're monitoring and why and there's a significant rationalisation could be taken and I think there's also a question of if we're talking about valuing the benefits of sport and physical activity you know we've had this conversation with our members saying well why don't we ask every person that's a member of a sports club and that's a member of a gym and everything else for questions so do you feel physically better because you've been active?  Did you learn any new skills or develop any confidence and did you make any friends? because if that's what we're measuring then let's have a conversation about that and if everybody measured on those same things then we might get into a different place we still need to understand the demographics if people are participating because that's where we identify gaps and understand what we need to do differently but we also monitor things to death sometimes if you look at the small amounts of money that some governing bodies and clubs get and that again would be across the whole voluntary sector the amount of monitoring and measurement that goes into that actually takes away from some of the delivery so I think there's a fine balance to be done but I do think there's a rationalisation of what is it we're valuing and let's measure that and not have to measure the death out of everything that's a helpful balance point I also just wanted to touch on the issues that's been raised in previous panels about barriers to women accessing sport at an elite level and the pathways do you have any particular examples where obviously the ones that have been cited are mainly able to sustain an income to participate and to sustain their participation at that elite level? Is there any models within sports that you think are really good exemplars that could be carried over into other sports or is there any insight that you might have about how we capture best practice? I think within the Sports Scotland Institute of Sport that is who looks after and funds our athletes who are on the performance pathway that is very much around either team sports or individual sports who are looking to achieve on the Olympic or Commonwealth Games stage and that funding is equally spread across male, female athletes that are coming through In terms of that pathway we know that governing bodies in our clubs help support the regional performance pathway so a young person from local authorities going down a sport specific pathway there is various stages there where they might be picked up by a regional team or a regional approach whereby they are being supported from a local authority level and that sports governing body there are many models out there where they will support younger athletes who are on that pathway so Scottish Rugby, Scottish Hockey for example have teams from age group level and that is who is feeding into the elite international athletes If I could just jump back very quickly on to the data side of things, Sports Scotland are responsible obviously for the collection and creation of the data across all of our funded and invested programmes so through active schools, our community sport hubs, our governing bodies we do monitor and collect the data and information and one part of that is the numbers and the figures and that does help us to see where we are and give us that national picture so for instance we know that over 100,000 girls and young women were active within active schools over that last full year that we collected I think that bringing it together we can definitely, there is more we can do there in terms of looking from all of our different programmes and we are not just girls but anyone is active across the invested areas but a huge part of what we are looking at in terms of using that information is educating our workforce to understand and to use that data to make better decisions and that is something that we are really passionate about is the sharing and learning aspect so not only having the information but actually when you get that report back are you able to look at that in your local context and a lot of this is about being able to address inequalities at a local level so we want them to take those figures look at that from a local community perspective and understand what changes they can make whether that's the next year or whether that's the common term to help address what they can see through the figures that they're getting and that sharing and learning piece around the impact so the qualitative information that goes alongside the numbers is hugely important so we are showcasing the good practice examples and people can see and learn from other things that are working within their own communities Do you think we need to do more to feed this back particularly to local authorities because it seems to me that a lot of these decisions are end of year financial decisions that are in order to balance the budget there's a menu of pretty painful decisions that have to be made and it's not necessarily well informed about if I cut this to say x amount of money it's actually pushing some problems somewhere else in the system in terms of potentially exclusion from sport, mental health impacts, physical health impacts etc. Do you think that's something we need to improve in Scotland? There's always improvements to be made in and around that and we absolutely recognise the landscape our partners are working within at the moment and we are supporting and trying to protect the workforces where we can and that's an absolute priority if sport Scotland is projecting the investment into our current workforces so we've got the people on the ground able to deliver but I agree that there's more we can be doing Stephanie Callaghan's got a brief supplementary on this issue We spoke earlier on about single mothers being the least likely to get involved in sport about how mothers put their children first and if only women had more time So I suppose what I'm thinking is how do we look at making sure that women make it a priority to look after their physical and mental health and get involved in sport, get involved in activities and also that perhaps pregnancy postnatal period, even prenatal period is maybe an opportunity to do that We have lots of mums who prioritise their children and will go to breastfeeding groups, toddlers groups Why are we not looking at them going to activities and sports groups as well Getting that message really out to those parents that if they keep themselves active, if they get involved in sports that is going to be a huge benefit for their children So is this an area that we should be looking to develop so that we can bring through the next generation of young people If I could take that to David first of all please, it would be good to hear from Fiona and I can see Kim nodding away One of the interesting things that I first came across in the research when I first got on board with the OSS was a bit of research and I've seen it now several times done in different countries which is the same thing so I tend to believe it is that mothers are the most important role models in where their children take up sport not just girls, girls and boys Where there is a mother in the household who will take that child to sport that child is more likely to be involved in sport and physical activity for the rest of their life So the mother in lots of research shows up to be the most important individual So obviously helping mothers and one of the things we've discovered with that decline over the last 20 years we do have a generation of parents who have never been involved in sport I get asked some interesting questions from mothers about children having butterflies in their tummy before going to the sport I'll keep them off because they're obviously sick When I first had that conversation I was quite taken aback Now I expect it and I say well that's not just butterflies it's just nerves so they go and they take part Now as soon as the mother knew that she was happy then to send not a problem So we do see some really good examples of mother and toddler clubs that are now walking clubs and going out and from the OSS point of view we see that as sport a mother who's going with a group of mothers to go out to go for a walk taking them baby for a walk and do something active I think the important thing is that the support is there A lot of what you're hearing today and a lot I know as a committee you're looking for ideas interventions that you can get on the back of and say that's something we need to introduce and a lot of what you'll hear actually will come back to the fact that it's about the facilities it's about the opportunity to take part Don't make the mistake and don't fall into the trap I've heard some politicians who have told me girls and women don't actually want to do sport that's one of the problems we've got My experience and the research tells us that's not the case Even women who will tell you I'm not sportating, I don't want to do sport you put something on in the environment that they're in that's easy, affordable, safe environment and it's fun, the focus on fun sport activity you'll be amazed how many people take it up and they do it and I'm sure Mr Gohan you'll have seen examples of some of your patients in the past who you encourage when something's on there something that they can do then actually they will get involved and they'll turn like that and tell you oh I quite enjoy this so the key is about making sure the opportunity is there what you're saying about mothers and toddlers clubs if we had a stronger focus in this country on that health and wellbeing outcome of sport right from the top to the bottom and we were looking to hold councils accountable and others accountable for the health and wellbeing benefits of sport not just putting sport on but making sure we're addressing the inequalities addressing poverty going back to the example I used earlier on of the Dutch where they've gone down that road and said okay you're only going to get funded if we can actually see evidence of this then you'll see clubs and groups and societies making more of an effort to put that activity on alongside whether it's the mother and toddlers whether it's whatever kind of club they're putting on but don't make a mistake of thinking mums don't want to do it they do want to do it but they want it in a fun and safe environment that's what we've heard from the research that we've got so opportunities are there we just need to create opportunities I'm sorry we need to move on to our last theme we only have about eight minutes left so I'm going to pass to Sandish Gohani and if I can ask people to keep their questions and answers short please so we get as much information in so I was supposed to start by asking so in one of your previous answers you said you have data and there's 100,000 women that are participating my question is within your data what's the ethnic breakdown so it depends what data set that we're looking at with regards to that we are aware that we need to do more within that and in the past we haven't gathered as widespread data but we recognise the importance of that and we're working with our partners on that so do you collect ethnicity data or do you do so across our active schools programme and our governing body information we are gathering that data now and as I was saying in the past we had and we recognise the importance of that and we're trying to get that right with our partners currently so looking forwards to try to increase participation we need to know what's going wrong at the moment and what the problems are and that's been the whole point of having everyone here today but if we don't I feel that there's a big difference even within girls' women with people's ethnic backgrounds because culturally it makes a difference and David you spoke about having in your area in that safe space and that's very important so ethnicity data is vital and as you're now collecting this data what do you think you're going to be doing differently to try to get people from ethnic backgrounds playing sport? Yes, so there's quite a number of things that we're looking at currently within that within Scotland we're just engaging in a new partnership with Sport & Equals so a UK-wide race discrimination charity to further our understanding around the barriers to participation and that's really we want to understand the barriers within Scotland and not take information and data from elsewhere in the UK that partnership will help with the training and raising awareness and understanding and as I said before across all of the barriers that are facing people not participating it's understanding the reasons why and what is not available for them with where they're living in terms of them participating and that's the key area that we do want our workforces to be looking at and understanding and it comes back to that local need so across the whole sporting system from grass routes through to our club sport and through to our performance sport we want to understand where the barriers are what the figures are so that we can then learn about who's not participating and approach that from a community point of view of putting something on in the right place for people to attend and participate Fantastic In your submission you spoke of a lack of both in-depth and longitudinal research in Scotland in the last 20 years now we heard from David and certainly just now we've heard that there is some work being done who do you think the responsibility to collect this data should fall upon is it the Scottish Government or is it organisations like Sport Scotland and clubs that have people that are there I think it's an area where we all play our part and I think it's beyond just sport and physical activity in that sense so again let's be clear and also confirm we're talking about a budget of what 30 million it's not a huge budget in terms of what we're trying to do and I would argue is there a smaller budget that impacts on more people but I think everybody's keen to play their part there I think it's getting the information being succinct about what it is that we need and what we're going to try and do with that that it can actually be meaningfully assessed and meaningfully reviewed but also I think it's explained to people why it's important I think I often joke when I'm asked you're on a phone call for something you're trying to open an account for something and you want my blood group next there's an awful lot of data that everybody requires and I think there's a little bit we maybe need to be open and transparent as a society about what data we're gathering and why because it's exactly as Ailsa said that's why we want it because we want to make things better for people to give data which makes things quite hard there's the standard prefer not to say and I think there's a lot of response that comes from that so I think there's a role we all have to play in that in working and moving things forward I think our governing bodies are working really hard on it but there's a systems part behind that as well so a lot of our governing bodies have no staff so a significant part of governing bodies have no staff at all and it's run by volunteers that's not an excuse but it does make things quite challenging so a way of us all working collectively that makes that a little bit easier but I think one of the key questions in there is local authorities so it was the point that was made earlier in terms of their accountability for this 90% of investment so we're talking about community sport they're the big players here guys they're sitting with 90% of the investment in sport what are they being accountable for what are we challenging councillors on trusted an incredibly difficult position but doing a really really good job we need to be asking the councillors and the councillors different questions but definitely if you talk I can just pause you there, sorry now I'm asking specific questions here so again Kim if I could just stay with you David spoke about how women and girls want to participate in sport and in your submission you said there's a gender gap by 1718 and it's widening it's about 30% and of girls who describe themselves as sporty compared to boys and also then say that this continues to widen into 30s and 40s so what can be done about this how can we address this gap and try to get more participation because I think we all talk sport but actually as a GP as David said earlier I just want people to be more active as the first step and then if you're really more active maybe you will do sport but as long as the people are more active how can we do that so we didn't put in a submission so I'm not sure whose figures they were so they were somebody else's but very happy to talk to the point or if you want the person that wrote that to answer I'm very happy either way so I think it's about a breadth of opportunity I'm very passionate about sport and physical activity and I genuinely believe there's something out there for everybody but I think that also varies by life stage and time that people have and we know that the key indicator of life expectancy so that's your point about Mother Stephanie you want to live a longer life to see your kids grow old and maybe your grandkids go old then you want to take part in physical activity so I think it's about people having opportunities to be active in whatever way they would choose it's the point that colleagues have made about them being informed in what activity is that they would like and it's the barriers that have been spoken about by colleagues throughout but it's making sure that those opportunities exist and that they exist locally if people can't get into facilities and there aren't enough people to volunteer as coaches or as volunteers then they're the barriers to anybody being active and it's more prevalent for women so breadth of opportunities i.e. there need to be a number of different types of activity but there also needs to be somewhere for them to go and people to make that happen and they are massive barriers that we're facing across sport thank you thank you very much unfortunately we've ran out of time for this morning come to the end of this session to thank the panel for their contributions for those of you who did put in submissions too and given us additional information and we're going to briefly suspend so the next item on our agenda is further scrutiny of NHS boards and today we'll take evidence from the State Hospitals Board for Scotland and I welcome to the committee Robin McNaught who's the director of finance and eHealth at the State Hospitals Board for Scotland that is joining us remotely welcome to the committee Robin we're going to move straight to questions and I'm going to pass to Sandish Gohani thank you very much and thank you for joining us Robin if I could start by asking about translators obviously when it comes to mental health being able to talk to your doctor or psychiatrist your nurse is vital to speak the language then it's almost impossible and part of the mental welfare commission said that access to translators might not quite be as we'd hoped for so how are you addressing this issue? thank you there's two aspects to it actually where we're moving forward so two separate students are moving forward there's one is looking to increase the availability of the recognised translators we have for the languages with which we currently have any issues on site with any patients to make sure that we're not solely relying perhaps on one translator but we do have backup options available to bring in alternatives if somebody happens to be unavailable and the other element we're actually looking at as part of a broader exercise but it's one which some early success in some of the initial work that we've done is with IT systems with automatic translation that can be done either written or verbal through screens and we're looking to take forward as part of a much more extensive digital inclusion programme we're looking at which is in the early stages of evaluation and will actually be something that will be a project that will run for we expect will potentially be a three to five year project overall but one of the early elements of that that we would look to bring on board is the facility to recognise translation through a tablet or through a mobile device because we've seen that work successfully elsewhere and I think while it's a technology that is still obviously developing it's developing very rapidly and is something that we would look to be able to take advantage of going forward Fantastic and certainly that could be used throughout the NHS once you have developed it appropriately I'd like to ask you a little bit more about patients who have been told that can move to less secure units now there were a number that were eligible to be transferred being delayed what barriers are you facing in moving patients into those lower secure areas the main barrier is quite simply the availability of beds in those medium secure areas the impact of it is that if those patients are held for longer than we would like them to be in our premises then it does restrict the potential movement of other patients and also obviously creates a focus of staff resources to be dealing with those patients where under other staffing pressures we would perhaps like those staffing resources more widely spread or prioritised elsewhere but the main obstruction to it is the availability of beds because of a physical lack of beds or is it because of staff to actually staff those areas my understanding is it's the physical availability of them in the other sites and my final question is about patients who are with yourselves but are there have no real need to be with yourself and they're there because they have been there for assessment for review and there's no end date to how long they're there with you for what are you doing for those patients to try to move them along or is it very much the availability of beds to move people in areas? The clinical teams do work extensively with other facilities to assess on a daily basis to see how availabilities are forecast and when transfers are able to take place and I think perhaps what is also key to that is that while it's a situation that I don't think neither ourselves nor the other sites should wish to be in when patients aren't able necessarily to move on at a time when they ideally would be is to make sure that the time spent with them and the facilities available to them and the activities that are able to be undertaken in terms of their presence on our site and their movement around the site etc are tailored appropriately so that they're not finding themselves excessively restricted compared to some of the other patients perhaps with us on a longer term basis. Thank you. One of the other recommendations made in the mental welfare commission report that Sandesh Gohani touched on was that managers should ensure patients and carers have the opportunity to attend or participate in MDT meetings so I wonder if you could perhaps update the committee on the progress the state hospital has made on that recommendation. It is and has always been recognised that it is an important aspect for the patients to be at the multidisciplinary meetings. There was a slight issue with that as we came through the Covid period in terms of attending physically and while when the Covid period struck we were I think very quick actually and certainly compared to some other places we had very quick progress in terms of bringing in automated ways of communications both internally and with the outside world that there still was a bit of a delay in terms of patients then being able to be engaged with the clinical teams through remote facilities if they weren't able to be meeting in person on-site. There was a bit of a dip in that through that period. The mental welfare commission's visits to us were November 2021 and later on in 22 September October 2022. It was actually August 2020 and November 2021. The attendance at these meetings has been improving since then and I think perhaps one important aspect is that we have as part of what we call a performance workbook there are extensive targets and measures that are controlled through that and one of those is the attendance at the CPA meetings which has been showing an improvement in recent months and will continue to be a close focus for us. The performance workbook effectively links our corporate objectives to our own delivery plan and KPIs and equality outcomes and through all of those aspects then we will make sure that that... Can I just drag you back to the question that I was looking for so in terms of you've explained what's happened in terms of inpatients but participation of carers within AGT meetings? The carers similarly we have worked a much more a much more improving position in terms of carers participation and attendance since the restrictions of Covid have opened up again we were looking and did provide and work with carers in terms of providing them with remote facilities for some who didn't have that when we were encouraging their engagement at that time one or two of those do continue to engage remotely and in terms of travel there is a continuing focus to try and manage that obviously effectively in terms of the in-person meetings but we are moving more towards more in-person meetings not just in this area but across all areas and in those cases then that attendance is improving again in the last six months Okay, thank you very much I'm now going to pass to Evelyn Tweed Thanks, convener Good morning, Robin Robin, can you update the committee on the progress that's been made towards opening a high secure service for women at the state hospital? Well, yes there is actually a meeting due to be held fairly shortly and the local director our meeting of the minister for mental health and the mental health director to discuss the direction of this but the current status is that we have had a two-day site visit to the Rampson hospital in England to the national female high secure service there which was undertaken by a multidisciplinary team from the state hospital there are only a small number of patients who are at Rampton from Scotland it has tended to be between none and three over recent years the tenth of an average stay of seven years as the current average the progress in terms of the state hospital itself is that there are clinical aspects which obviously would need to be addressed in terms of the individual treatment and also the capital aspect it's been estimated that to manage the clinical side of things in terms of the teams that would be required under location of the patients on the site the revenue cost would be probably around £2 million for the state hospital for that but there would be significant capital investment required for us to to make sure that the area in which the female patients were being held on site was obviously suitably restricted from the remainder of the site and it would also have impacts obviously in that way where some of the staffing cost comes in terms of patient movement around the site when the state hospital was built in its current form just over 10 years ago it was obviously built on the understanding that it was an all-male facility and because of the ward structure there would be capital expense to be required to place the female patients in a location of safety for them because of the nature of some of our male patients The women that are at the other facility in England in terms of seeing their family and friends how does that work? I believe that there is support given for families and friends to encourage the physical visiting where possible but I also understand that they have similar to the facility that we have for our patients to be able to communicate remotely as well Okay, thanks for that and do you foresee any impact of the new Contenvale prison opening on the services for high security treatment for women? It's hard to say because it's unpredictable in terms of the future needs that if the facility is deemed from a clinical point of view that that is appropriate for any future female patients requiring a certain level of treatment then that could assist but equally without a dedicated female high secure service that has been initially costed and has been discussed further for the state hospital then I think that it is likely that it would still remain the likely need that a facility such as Rapton would be required for certain female patients it's very much down to the individual case unfortunately it's one of those things that is very difficult to forecast in terms of knowing the future demand on the service from that area Thank you I'm going to pass to Sue Weber Sorry, I'm lost a bit Thank you Thank you very much for drawing my attention to my contribution this morning With the increasing pressures, Robin, that you just alluded to in terms of some development how can the state hospital board ensure that it is financially sustainable in the medium and long term while crucially maintaining the patient's safety? That's a very good question it's an area where we do feel quite pressured in the last in recent years we have managed our budget sustainably we've achieved the levels of savings required and we have been able to take forward new spend and new initiatives where the support has been available but it's something that is an ongoing cycle so we get to the end of the current year we're about to sign off on our year end accounts where we will have met our targets for the year but as soon as one year is complete then we're already working with budget holders towards how to better control next year the overall position is that our current forecast for next year is that we are within the 1% permissible we're looking at potentially a slight overspend in 2023-24 which we would then bring back in the following year that's arising from some one-off costs that we're looking to incur next year potentially with one or two areas of uncertainty in terms of particularly energy costs which are of significant concern not only to ourselves but I'm sure to many of the other boards we can only at this point estimate what those might be subject to price different levels of usage obviously we don't know how things will be come next winter in terms of the needs and the demands on energy but that is a significant cost pressure that we will be looking to manage within our budgets for next year the pressure on us is actually more because of that on the resultant level of savings that will be required to achieve in the year which is quite a bit up on the current year the specific pressure we have is that in contrast to a number of both the territorial and other national boards our staff costs as a percentage of our total costs are significantly higher and with that being over 80% around 84% of our costs are staffing then it doesn't leave a huge amount of other costs where we can look to make further efficiencies beyond what we've already been doing in recent years what's been supportive is that in the last two, three years we it sometimes almost feels to us because of the levels of costs we're perhaps talking about for example on the energy side we're saying it might be a pressure of an additional 500,000 for us next year now that in our context there's a lot in the context of national budgets obviously is not a significant amount but relative to our total budget then it is a significant element but we have where certain individual pressures have arisen we have been successful in getting additional support through but the strong feeling we're getting from budgetary discussions for 23.4 are that the national pressures in the coming year are going to be significantly more than last year and that does put additional pressures on us from perhaps the infrastructure side to things as well where there's a significant amount of work on for instance backlog maintenance of the site, the site as I mentioned just a little while goes over 10 years old now and it's at the stage where there is a rolling programme of maintenance required that is not insignificant we did get an additional level of support just over £400,000 last year when there was some funding available and that was a lot of use to us but ironically not long after that funding was made available there was then a communication at the time saying if the spend isn't yet committed then cannot be paused because some of the national monies were being pulled back a little so it's the main focus for us really to ensure sustainability is that when there are areas of additional pressure and we do discuss this at our quarterly meetings with our liaison team when there are additional pressures that we know are coming that have not been highlighted before is to bring those up at the early stage possible and discuss any additional funding routes that might be available and in some areas we're not looking at we're looking at some which are the same important to us but in national budgets are not for example we get a lot of work required on as I mentioned to your colleague minute to go on the digital side of things where there's a significant amount of development to do for particularly for the patient side in digital inclusion but we do need to set out perhaps a five year programme to say this is the funding that will be required for this because we're looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds on IT equipment and also additional staffing perhaps to manage that side of things where the main focus we really have is actually engaging very strongly with individual budget holders and making sure that all the budget holders are very aware of what the pressures are and coming to us with any initiatives as to how they can take new matters forward Robin, can I ask you with 84% of your budget being used to for staffing and workforce costs you've got a very small envelope there to try and find efficiency savings so with the backlog of maintenance that you were talking about do you think you're going to have to put on hold some of those projects and what risks does that give or present to your facility? There are none I would say of a priority that we put anything at risk which we'll be putting on hold at the moment those that we were able to bring in towards the end of last year with additional 400,000 were such that we were able to bring some areas through it tends to be more looking perhaps a year or two ahead where there are certain things coming to an end of life or end of life support if it's at the IT side of things that we would make sure that we need to bring those to the attention of the funding teams we do prioritise we've got a strong programme we do prioritise matters in terms of patient safety and risk as the essential spends and then the others will flow as funding permits Thank you for that Can I ask another quick question It's the independent review into forensic mental health services recommended at the state hospital introduces charges for the care and treatment of people from Northern Ireland so given the small number of patients from Northern Ireland in the state hospital do you think this is going to generate much income? Can you estimate that perhaps? At the moment I would say it's not on the basis that we had initial discussions with our colleagues in Northern Ireland and the stage of those discussions is such that our chief exec is referring it back to to St Andrew's house for further discussion because the initial approach to Ireland and the Zybertia went quite well into discussing matters with them but they are reverting back to what they see as the position when the hospital was established going back before the time of any of us in management there currently to state that there was an understanding between Northern Ireland and Scotland that that support would be given without charge so it's a position that our chief exec is picking up with the minister to try and take forward because I think that that discussion will now need to be taken to a higher level than between our board and our Northern Ireland colleagues Thank you, Robin moment we're making no assumptions of income at the moment Can I just ask there as a follow-up Robin, when that was reverted back to Scottish Government and to ministers? I don't know the exact time I'm afraid our chief exec I discussed it at one of our quarterly liaison meetings that would have been during 2022 I don't know the exact date I'm afraid for the committee to have that information if you wouldn't mind writing to the committee with that date because I think that's probably something that we would be looking to pursue an update on I'm going to now move to Emma Harper Thank you, convener Good morning to you, Robin I'm interested in some of the key performance indicators that the state hospital's board publishes and when I was on the health committee in the last session we talked about patients being offered an annual physical health review and it looks like the target is 90 per cent but what's being achieved is 51.78 per cent so I'm interested to hear as far as the annual physical health review what actions have been taken to address that specific key performance indicator That has been a strong focus through the clinical teams and I'm pleased to mention this looking at our current KPIs as reported to the board In our last update of the annual physical health review we are actually showing that now as being on our RAG status that is now being shown as green the level of that has now reached the required target for the teams so it was something that there was concern about expressed by our own board before and there was a focus then from the clinical teams to make sure that those were actually taking place and again it was somewhat Covid affected but that is now back on track and I know that last time when Professor Lindsay Thompson was here I asked questions about the challenges of overweight and persons with an increased body mass index and the challenges of how do you support people to have a healthier weight as part of supporting them I suppose as well and one of the things that Professor Thompson responded about was that the shop on site made a decision to have 80% healthy foods and 40% unhealthy foods whereas other places were doing 50-50 so that was a goal and at the moment I'm reading about ultra-high processed foods from a book by Chris Van Tullekin and he's talking about the relationship between UHP foods and how that correlates with obesity so I'm interested to how do you support the people when maybe activity isn't as easy to achieve but the groceries that are brought in by family members that was a highlighted issue in the last time that state hospital was here That's true and there are perhaps three aspects too there is the shop of families and visitors bringing items in and there is the availability and the participation in activities on site in terms of the shop that has continued and the proportion of unhealthy items there is now significantly down and that's something that's monitored by we have a supporting healthy choices working group who work closely with both patients and the shop and those changes have actually been welcomed it's not something that's caused as any issue to all the patients have been quite pleased with the new options and the new ranges that are available to them on site the group are also working far closer with visitors in terms of giving feedback to make sure that what is brought in is more compliant and quantities of anything that's perceived on the less healthy side of things is reduced and in most cases hopefully trying to eliminate the higher sugar drinks that some of them perhaps are trying to bring in and in terms of the activity the physical programme of activity on site is a strong focus for that team as well and in fact in recent weeks we actually had a week probably about a month ago where we had all sports awards for patients rewarding the patients for participation in sporting activities on site and taking forward initiatives like that are seen as really important to get the patients engaging with the trainers and with the team in the sports area and getting them participating in as many to some of them obviously new sports as possible they get fairly simple rewards in terms of certificates and so on but the patients really get engaged with that and the levels of participation were up on the previous year so that's something that will form obviously a key part going forward to make sure of this but the BMI can't be taken away from the fact that the little BMI challenge is still a significant one I think shared with other high secure settings and certainly something that we cannot take our eye off so that's something you obviously can't measure is the activity of individual patients in the state hospital I'll ask another wee quickie question we've asked other boards about how they're going to achieve net zero and I'd be interested to hear what the state hospital is doing to take forward any net zero activity so that we can hear about that yes certainly I'm pleased to that we are well on target with that our estates team have been looking very closely all the requirements of that and building towards net zero over recent years and we are actually already at our well ahead of our intended targets and have significant concerns in terms of failing to meet those women doing quite a lot recently in terms of electric vehicles with new charging points on site with new vehicles that are actually our own fleet moving to electric both the vehicles which we use externally and those which should just move around the site in terms of delivering goods to the various areas where a wind turbine on land close by that in recent years was dismissed because of economic grounds at the time but we are now revisiting it because circumstances have changed and some of the costs that were there before are now more manageable so we will be looking to potentially look at that too but that is much further down the line but in terms of the initiatives that our estates team are taking forward currently they are reporting on track for everything in terms of our 90s target so we are actually very pleased with how they have been performing Can I have one final wee question? Just a quick question in terms of someone who is transferred to the state hospital do you measure that as part of performance measurement for someone to then be relocated to another less secure facility for instance? Is that part of tracking of movement of patients? I don't quite in terms of as a performance indicator I'm just thinking about like I'm assuming that once someone is admitted to the state hospital that there is the potential for them to be transferred to a less secure facility as part of progress for a person so is that something that is monitored as well? It is, yes I just didn't quite pick up on that first I'm produce for that It is in terms of also measuring that when patients are transferred that certain processes are followed each time and that we make sure that everything is in place before during and after those transfers and also making sure that appropriate concerns or anything are discussed and everything is in place with the receiving facility before that transfer takes place Thank you I'm going to move to Sandesh Gohani but before I do I just want to put on record as I asked you a question about outcomes from the independent review of the delivery of friends at mental health services I commissioned that report as Minister for Mental Health so I'll just put that on record now Sandesh Gohani Thank you Emma Harper asked about healthy weight and I'm very keen to ask about smoking and vaping so what are your rates of smoking and rating because obviously they're very high as we know for people who have mental health issues and also what are you doing to reduce them? We have no smoking or vaping Thank you It's a closed site for patients and staff Thank you It looks like that's come as a surprise to you that the state hospital's done so well in that regard I'm now going to move on to the next theme to Gillian Mackay Thanks, convener and morning to Robin Working at the state hospital I imagine can differ greatly in other health boards In your opinion, what particular pressures do staff at the state hospital face and how is this likely to affect their wellbeing and what steps is the board taking to address this? That's a good question I think that there is inevitably, particularly for the nursing staff working and the medical staff working closely with the patients with the unpredictable nature of a number of our patients there is a significant element of stress that can impact on our staff and I think that's reflected in our, when we monitor the reasons for staff absences stress obviously is one which does feature there are a number of times when regrettably staff do get into incidents with patients and whether it's restrained with staff members do occasionally get hurt which obviously is concerned to us we're focusing very much on the patient wellbeing but obviously also on the staff wellbeing and in those instances there is a strong support working with those members of staff during their absence and for the period of returning to work while they're coming back directly into patient contact or into other areas of work first we did set up during the Covid period we set up a dedicated staff wellbeing centre with a number of staff dealing with that specifically that while there perhaps was a feeling at the time it was something that's been brought in for the Covid period and wouldn't be something that would decisively remain there after it is something we decided to keep in place and take forward so that staff wellbeing centre is now a dedicated area where staff can go during certain periods at their own remits they can meet with people there get a supportive chat there are some activities for them to be able to relax and switch off with there are periods when there are services available to them from physiotherapy or people like that coming in to give some consultations and we've found that there's been very good feedback from that in terms of the staff wellbeing and it's something that we're going to make sure we keep a focus going forward again it was something that's actually initiated with a bit of specific funding that came in but it's an area that we want to now focus on as part of our business as usual going forward as I'm sure we've been calling with other boards there's a number of aspects that ways of working and other aspects that have come out of the Covid period which are actually seen as being positive developments that we now want to keep moving forward with and that's certainly one of them That's great, thank you as well as the retention side of things as a committee we've kind of focused on recruitment as well and in your submission to the committee you highlight a key element campaign has been on education around the unique offer the state hospital can give for the opportunity of a career in forensic mental healthcare including continuing training and development. You said this is proving to be a successful campaign for newly qualified practitioners and for students expected to qualify in September 2023 with a growth in applications from social media campaigns Can you speak a bit more about the success of this campaign and how you think it could be reflected in other areas of the NHS That's interesting it's an aspect that's quite new to us because we have had issues with recruitment recruitment has been a challenge for us over recent years and the social media side of things is one which is new for us we've not had a big focus or a big presence with social media perhaps for obvious reasons given the nature of the site and our patients but we have used that as an increasing presence for recruitment basically on feedback from recruits that were coming in and important social media so that has now been recognised and it is a significant part excuse me another element of it that's been very supportive is that we were perhaps not as strong as we could be in the past staff were recruited how their induction and peer support developed going forward during their time with us and there's been a focus on the development of a peer support network both on the clinical and non-clinical side of things through the organisation we've been delivering training sessions on that in 2023 and we now have a number of staff trained as peer support workers you're dedicated to that to be able to provide that support excuse me and I think that's perhaps been another aspect that has been seen as very supportive to the initial recruitment element so perhaps I don't know how strong that is in other boards perhaps that's something that we've looked at that's great, thanks Camila Paul Swinney excuse me I'd just like to touch on the sickness abstinence rate of 5% to 7.68% what do you attribute that to and what additional support has there been in regards to improving staff mental health yes, it's risen it was at that level a little while ago and then it came down and it has now gone back up to to that current level at the moment the extent that the work that we're now looking to do in that is to get more clarity in some of the cases in terms of obviously the reasons behind that with trying to preempt what might be causing abstinence and how we can address that to make sure they're not being taken specific is in its early stages yet but within our human resources team we now have someone looking pure like that as their main focus to see what has changed since is it just a case of in a number of cases the impact of returning to physical working a number of staff have been working from home for two years and they've come back to physical working and all of a sudden finding things a bit different and I have to take a bit of extra time that has certainly come through in one or two areas and is seen as a potential cause for some of the increase but it's something that our human resources team are focusing specifically on now to look at it's quite a recent up turn to the current percentage so we need to see how it does progress over the next two or three months, perhaps do the next quarter and work on that but it's slightly frustrating because we had got it down to a good level from being higher up a few years ago and then when it starts creeping back up like this it's obviously a strong area of focus for us to make sure we address that Would you be able to share the findings of your work in this area once the causal fact has become more obvious Yes, I'm sure that that can be done, absolutely Thank you I'm going to turn to Emma Harper for a brief supplementary It's just a wee brief supplementary going back to what you were saying about induction and orientation and welcoming and developing and retaining new staff I'm asking as my previous role was a clinical educator who was responsible for developing and delivering an induction programme for all new staff Do you get to work with other boards to see how they're delivering certain programmes when it is, as far as not necessarily just mental health staff training and induction but just looking at other practice because I feel sometimes you are a bit it seems like quite separate because it's a state hospital but how do you feel as far as connecting with other health boards? That's like that but it's an interesting area because I think it's something that there's two aspects to it one, we actually and coming off on the human resources side quite a number of staff who have joined us on human resources in recent years have come from other boards that were able to bring some of the learning and the knowledge that they have from those other boards on arrival but at the same time it's something that we we actually strongly encourage and have been doing so more in recent years not just in the recruitment and HR side of things across other areas you know perhaps of e-health and procurement and so on where I think we have as you say we are a stand-alone site and quite different from the other boards and at times in the past I think there's perhaps been a risk that when we're then faced with something we think we have to face it alone and work out how to deal with it and the culture very much now is we've been really driving towards making sure that we work as much as possible with other boards and not reinventing something that the solution is already there or vice versa where we can perhaps help other boards because we've developed something that could be of use and I think the level of collaborative working we have now across the site is significantly higher both in terms of the the level of specific from the service level agreements and other areas of mutual working and also in terms of from our senior management and directors level the level of engagement that we all have as senior executives working with colleagues in other boards and working as representatives on national boards or peer groups et cetera and th