Chamber and committees

Under the Equality Act 2010 service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled children and provide auxiliary aids and services to avoid substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled children. In addition, service providers have a duty to actively deal with inequality, and to prevent direct disability discrimination, indirect disability discrimination and discrimination arising from disability and harassment or victimisation on the basis, or a perceived basis, of protected characteristics, including disability. It is for individual service providers to ensure that they comply with these duties.

In addition, under the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Educational Records) (Scotland) Act 2002 responsible bodies have duties to develop and publish accessibility strategies to increase pupils access to the curriculum, access to the physical environment of schools and improving communication with disabled pupils. Also education authorities and other agencies have duties under the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 (as amended) to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, including disabled pupils.

Furthermore, the Children's Rights and Services Planning Working Group, which includes members from local authorities, NHS boards and the third sector, oversees and advises on the national support and engagement required for the implementation of Children’s Services Planning duties (Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 - Part 3), including the development of statutory guidance and regulations. This will include how statutory guidance will reflect the need for Children’s Services Plans to provide for children’s services both universal and targeted (including for disabled children), as well as reflecting Part 3 requirements to provide services in a local area which: support wellbeing, prevention and early intervention, are integrated and make the best use of resources.

The Scottish Government welcomes the survey undertaken and will consider its findings carefully. We take a human rights based approach in the development of The Getting It Right for Every Child framework that is designed to improve the delivery by all services and agencies working with disabled children and their families of the wellbeing support that they need. We recognise that some disabled children and young people continue to face health and social inequalities and we have developed a number of strategies that call on localities to promote equality and actively involve people in developing the local services that affect them. Besides the participation work we fund that is described in answers to S4W-24201 and 24202 on 10 February 2015, the national strategies the Keys to Life and the Scottish Autism Strategy have strands of work for children and families, for example, the Parent Participation Project, and local work providing sensory/autism play opportunities and family support. National disabilities organisations are also funded to provide information to parent carers and provide signposting to relevant information.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Government is committed to equality of access to support and services for disabled children and young people in line with our responsibilities under the Children and Young People’s (Scotland) Act 2014 to take steps in support of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We recognise that currently many children with disabilities face barriers to access of services that could help them achieve their potential. The Getting It Right for Every Child framework has been developed to improve the ability of health boards, local authorities and partner services and agencies to work in partnership in their delivery of wellbeing support all children and their families, including those where disability features. Moreover, under Part 3 of the Act, children’s services planning for an area as a whole will now be a joint responsibility of local authorities and health boards and will need to focus on prevention and early intervention, which should ensure more joined-up planning between services in support of disabled children and their families. Work is currently under way to develop statutory guidance for public consultation later in the year.

There are a number of Scottish Government funding initiatives designed to increase the range and availability of wellbeing support available locally, for example, national projects for disabled children and young people funded through the Strategic Partnership and Early Intervention Funds, the Keys to Life and the Scottish Autism Strategy programme funds, and the Short Breaks funding (£13 million between 2010 to 2015) that supports largely disabled children and young people through a grant scheme providing opportunities that include access to leisure and sporting activities.

We have allocated an additional £10 million in 2015-16 to support the delivery of improved cycling and walking infrastructure, and to support its use and help people make smarter travel choices.

We will make further announcements on this funding in due course and have written to Spokes confirming the 2015-16 budget for cycling and walking.

Revenue funding of £70.5 million over two years has been agreed and confirmed to deliver the commitment to free school meals for p1-p3 and in September 2014, we were pleased to agree with COSLA capital funding for local government of £24.8 million in 2014-15.

These figures are confirmed by the latest local government finance circular, which was published on 11 December 2014, and provides a breakdown by local authority: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/local-government/17999/11203

The school curriculum in Scotland is non-statutory and decisions about what topics are covered and how they are covered, are left to the professional judgement of teachers and not government ministers. Education Scotland provides support for teachers and schools to ensure that the curriculum remains relevant, engaging and inspiring for all learners. Their Studying Scotland website contains a section on Great Scots, which includes historical figures, modern day and past entrepreneurs, performers and sports men and women. An entry on Andrew Carnegie will appear very shortly on the website.

The UK Coal Authority is the licensing authority for underground coal gasification in Scotland and the UK.

The Scottish Government will take a cautious, responsible, evidence-based approach to the development of new energy technologies, such as underground coal gasification. This should give security and confidence to the people of Scotland that such resources would only be developed if it can be done in an environmentally safe and satisfactory way.

It is the Scottish Government’s understanding that no decision has been taken by the Australian Government to ban underground coal gasification developments.

The Scottish Government is clear that the deployment of new energy technologies like underground coal gasification can only happen if they are in line with our environmental objectives and regulatory requirements. Protection of the environment is of prime importance.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has statutory responsibility for the protection of Scotland’s water environment. It has powers under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 to regulate activities that interact with our water environment.

The Emergency Food Fund is supporting one project in Fife. That project is run by the East Neuk Recovery Group Initiative and has been allocated £10,000.