Chamber and committees

NHS Health Boards and local authorities are responsible for the provision of, and funding for, services for deaf children. This includes the provision of specific therapeutic approaches.

The Scottish Government funds the Scottish Sensory Centre and CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to school staff on support, including the use of assistive technology, for children and young people with specific communication and sensory needs.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-19040 on 22 June 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

NHS Health Boards and local authorities are responsible for the provision of, and funding for, services for deaf children. This includes the provision of specific therapeutic approaches.

The Scottish Government also funds the Scottish Sensory Centre and CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to school staff on support, including the use of assistive technology, for children and young people with specific communication and sensory needs.

In Scotland, a formal identification of dyslexia or a learning difficulty is not required before appropriate support is provided, although I recognise that a diagnosis can be helpful for children and young people and their families.

We want all children and young people, to receive the support they need to reach their full potential. Under the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004, education authorities have duties to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, including those with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. We are committed to supporting teachers and school staff to meet these needs.

Our national approach recognises that children and young people with dyslexia benefit from early identification. We are working with local government partners to continue to improve the consistency of early identification through the adoption of the Scottish working definition of dyslexia and use of the Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit’s Dyslexia Identification Pathway.

The Scottish Government does not currently fund adult assessments for dyslexia and has therefore made no economic assessment of the cost. We are not presently considering a pilot scheme.

Free support and assessment for dyslexia is provided to children and young people in educational settings.

Additional support is available to adults with dyslexia regardless of the availability of diagnosis. This includes access to work support to obtain and maintain employment.

The Scottish Government works closely with and funds Dyslexia Scotland who provide information, advice and support to people with dyslexia and those who support them.

Data on the number of people accessing alcohol treatment services in Scotland is available from Public Health Scotland’s “National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Waiting Times” series of reports. It includes specific figures on the number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment.

It is published by Public Health Scotland and covers the period from 01 April 2011 onwards as earlier data is not available.

The reports covering the period from April 2011 to September 2019 can be found via the URL link below:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/ .

The reports covering the period from October 2019 to December 2022 can be found via the URL link below:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/

Although the data is publicly available online, in order to answer the above question, it is necessary to combine extracts from multiple reports. Results have been presented in Table 1. Not all necessary data, however, is available to answer the question fully, which explains blank boxes in the table.

Table 1. Number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment

We do not hold this information in the Transport Scotland injury road collisions database. We only have information about whether an animal was involved in a collision on the carriageway and we only collect information about the severity of people who are injured in the collision.

The Scottish Government has established a Strategy Steering Group to oversee the development and delivery of a Palliative and End of Life Care Strategy, and aims to publish a draft strategy for consultation by the end of 2023.

The Expert Reference Group (ERG) on Digital Assets was established to provide legal clarification on accommodation of digital assets within Scots private law. The ERG is currently drafting a response to the Law Commission for England and Wales’ (LCEW) Consultation Paper on Digital Assets. The response will take into account any areas of divergence between Scots law and English law but will also confirm those areas where alignment might be of benefit.

The £800,000, which was allocated for media campaigns in 2021 and 2022 on the use of naloxone, was fully spent on the “How to Save a Life” campaign commissioned by the Scottish Government working in collaboration with the Scottish Drugs Forum.