Chamber and committees

Social Security Scotland routinely publishes information on Scottish Child Payment applications, payments and the number of children actively in receipt of the payment by local authority area.

As of 30 June 2024, the number of children aged 0-15 years actively benefitting from Scottish Child Payment in each local authority area relevant to the West Scotland parliamentary region were as follows:

• Argyll and Bute – 4,100;
• East Dunbartonshire – 3,770;
• East Renfrewshire – 3,575;
• Inverclyde – 5,375;
• North Ayrshire – 10,395;
• Renfrewshire – 10,545;
• West Dunbartonshire – 7,165.

This information along with other local authority areas can be found in the latest Scottish Child Payment Official Statistics publication:

https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/publications/statistics.

The next edition of the Scottish Child Payment publication which will cover the period to the end of September 2024, is due to be published on 26 November 2024.

Public Health Scotland published Estimated Prevalence of Opioid Dependence in Scotland 2014/15 to 2019/20 - Estimated Prevalence of Opioid Dependence in Scotland - Publications - Public Health Scotland earlier this year, based on Bayesian analysis of linked healthcare data. However, those estimate do not include problematic use of other substances, nor do they provide information about the living and family circumstances of people experiencing problematic drug use.

The Scottish Government also published Child protection - Children's Social Work Statistics Scotland: 2021 to 2022 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) which showed that there were 2,358 new registrations onto the Child Protection Register during 2022 where parental drug misuse or parental substance misuse was identified as a concern at the Case Conference. Similar to the Public Health Scotland source, however, this does not provide a full picture of problematic drug use in households.

I met with the UN Special Rapporteur earlier this year and we welcome publication of the Report’s findings.

Our Strategic Approach to challenge and deter demand for prostitution and improve support for those with experience was published in February 2024. It recognises that prostitution cannot be considered in isolation, and sets out the Scottish Government’s collective approach, working with stakeholders across the wider public and third sector.

In common with the Nordic Model, the Strategy seeks to enable women to safely, and sustainably, exit from prostitution.

While we continue work with partners to develop a wider improved support pathway, we are now in a position to make progress with an initial phase of this work. Collaborating with Police Scotland, we will look to challenge demand and improve support for women with experience of commercial sexual exploitation.

I met with key stakeholders earlier this month to outline this collaboration, which includes:

• A secondment from the Scottish Government’s Violence against Women and Girls team to ensure that strategic connections to wider relevant Scottish Government initiatives are made.
• Supporting the further development of Operation Begonia (already operational in Aberdeen) to lead to a national and consistent policing approach.
• Funding Police Scotland to gather intelligence to understand the full extent of demand for commercial sexual exploitation across Scotland, helping to better reach victims and strengthen the response to tackling perpetrators

This is a key stage in implementing our Strategic Approach, ensuring that we increase the opportunities for women to access support whilst at the same time ever limiting the opportunities for those carrying out exploitation.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS boards to carefully scale up the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme across Scotland, ensuring implementation models are sustainable and delivered with quality.

Under this phased rollout of the programme (a) FNP is not yet offered in Island Boards and (b) we are still in the process of scaling up across NHS Highland areas, noting we began delivering the programme in Argyll and Bute earlier this year.

We want to ensure every eligible mother can access this support, that is why we are testing a number of options to support delivery in remote and rural contexts. The learning will be used to build a sustainable model that could expand the FNP programme to these areas in the future.

The Stigma Action Plan was published on 12 January 2023 as part of the Cross Government response to the Drug Deaths Taskforce. As part of this, a “Design Team” made up of people with lived and living experience are currently exploring what concrete future actions should be taken to minimize the impact of stigma for people who are experiencing problems with their drug or alcohol use.

A number of existing initiatives are already working to reduce the stigma people who use drugs and their families experience. For instance, the Charter of Rights, to be launched on December 11th this year will articulate the Right to Health for this community, a Mental Health Protocol, delivered by Health Improvement Scotland addresses the barriers to accessing co-existing mental health and substance use problems, and an initiative named Humanising Health Care is working with medical students, providing opportunities for them to meet and speak to people in recovery to learn about the human costs of drug and alcohol problems.

We have been working closely with a range of stakeholders to make sure that children, young people and families affected by harms of alcohol or drug use are supported in their own right, as well as being involved in their loved one’s treatment and recovery without having to suffer the shame of stigma which we knows drives people away from support.

The Scottish Government has established a National Rehabilitation Network, comprised of rehabilitation leads from each health board or health and social care partnership. Network members lead on supporting the application of the Six Principles of Good Rehabilitation and share best practice where the principles are already in place.

The introduction of the Rehabilitation Self-Assessment tool, issued to all 14 health boards in September 2024, will support the evaluation of progress against the Six Principles of Good Rehabilitation to improve rehabilitation services as set out in the Once for Scotland Rehabilitation Approach. The data collected through the self-assessment can be used to demonstrate the impact of rehabilitation services across health and social care services and raise the profile of rehabilitation.

Scottish Government reconfirmed the commitment to improving rehabilitation services through joining the World Rehabilitation Alliance (WRA) in May 2023. This global network of stakeholders supports the implementation of the Rehabilitation 2030 Initiative through advocacy activities. Scottish government continue to share approaches and learning internationally.

We know that people affected by substance use and their families face ongoing issues relating to out of hours support. The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) operate a services directory which has details of drug and alcohol support services across Scotland.

As well as local contacts, we support national phone lines that are available for anyone to call. Know the Score operate a phoneline which is open until 9pm during the week and then open 10am until 4pm on weekends. This provides free, confidential support for people experiencing issues with drugs, alcohol or mental health.

Scottish Recovery Consortium publish information on recovery communities and local groups which operate during the Christmas period and this is available on their website ahead of Christmas.

To support practitioners in applying the Six Principles of Good Rehabilitation, Scottish Government has developed a self-assessment tool in partnership with the National Rehabilitation Network. This tool was issued to all 14 health boards in September 2024, to be used as a local benchmarking assessment in line with local rehabilitation strategies, for monitoring and evaluation purposes as well as improvements in patients care.

The data collected through the self-assessment will be used to demonstrate the impact of rehabilitation services across health and social care services.

Since the strategy was published Scottish Government has also awarded funding to support the delivery of the Once for Scotland Approach. This includes £526,650 to the Care Inspectorate to enable them to scale up their Care About Physical Activity Programme and £250,000 to Thistle Foundation to support rehabilitation teams to adopt person-centred rehabilitation.

As set out in the answer to question S6W-30423 on 22 October 2024, the Civil Aviation Authority has made a series of safety recommendations regarding hospital helicopter landing sites following a tragic accident in Plymouth, in 2022. The safety recommendations apply across the UK and those that are applicable to Scottish sites are being acted on by NHS Boards, with support from NHS Assure.

While this work is ongoing, Search and Rescue helicopters will land at alternative sites where this is required for safety reasons. Scottish Air Ambulance and charity air ambulances can continue to land at NHS Scotland helipads.

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.

Supporting fair and green economic growth is a core priority for this Government, as highlighted in our recently published Programme for Government. Since 2007, Scotland’s GDP per capita has grown by 10.7%, outpacing the UK’s growth of 5.6%. Productivity in Scotland has also increased at an average of 1.1% per year, well above the UK average of 0.4%.

It is encouraging to see Sir Tom Hunter lending his support and expertise to promising businesses in Scotland. The ScaleUpScotland programme aligns well with the broad range of initiatives we support to help businesses grow, such as the Techscaler programme, Scottish EDGE, and the support from our Enterprise Agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank. All of these efforts are integrated into our New Deal for Business, creating a strong foundation for economic success.