Chamber and committees

Our pilot to provide free sanitary products to those from low income homes in Aberdeen offers an excellent opportunity to test which approaches are best able to reach those in greatest need in as dignified and sensitive a way as possible.

To this end, Community Food Initiatives North East will distribute sanitary products to community-based organisations and education establishments, and it will be for these partners – along with their service users - to decide the most appropriate ways of making products available locally. The partners have been selected on the basis of their expertise of working with people experiencing poverty, which makes them well placed to identify those most in need. We do not, therefore, anticipate a requirement for those wishing to access sanitary products to produce paperwork or other evidence. Those affected will be able to get sufficient supplies of their preferred product, choosing from the range made available throughout the pilot or, in some instances, being provided with the money to purchase their preferred product

CFINE will then gather a range of information from the community organisations in order to allow us to assess the strengths and limitations of different approaches to targeting and distribution.

All boards have policies in place that enable them to pay travel expenses in advance, in some circumstances, for women travelling to England in order to access abortion services.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving abortion services for women in Scotland, including improving arrangements for women who have to be referred to specialist services in England. The next meeting of the National Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Advisory Committee in October will discuss areas where improvements to abortion services could be made.

As set out in S5W – 07528, there are a number of actions in place to support those children and young people affected by homelessness to ensure that they have access to educational and other services.

Homeless households with children will be in temporary accommodation while they wait for appropriate, sustainable settled accommodation as a legal right.

The Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Order 2014, sets a number of standards that need to be met in temporary accommodation for households with children. This includes a standard ensuring proximity to education facilities and services in the locality which are being used or might reasonably be expected to be used by the homeless applicant to the local authority.

The Scottish Government has also published guidance on Meeting the Best Interests of Children Facing Homelessness which emphasises adopting the GIRFEC approach of multi-agency working and provides guidance on particular issues face by children living in households facing homelessness. This can be accessed at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/BuiltEnvironment/Housing/homeless/futurework/homelesschildren. This makes it clear that local authorities should assess and identify factors that may impact on a child’s well-being with particular reference to education.

Further, under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (as amended), local authorities are under a duty to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of children and young people for whom they are responsible. This includes those who are affected by family circumstances, including homelessness.

There is support in place for young people facing financial barriers (including those who may be at risk of becoming homeless), to get the support they need to stay in education and increase their long term chances of getting a job. For example, Further Education students are able to receive a non-repayable bursary. Scottish domiciled students studying an undergraduate degree in Scotland can access paid tuition fees and a living cost support package of up to £7,625 from the Students Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS). The Education Maintenance Allowance also supports young people aged 16-19 from financially disadvantaged households to remain in post-compulsory education.

The Scottish Government has also committed £750m during the course of this Parliament through the Attainment Scotland Fund to provide targeted support for children, schools and communities to close the poverty related attainment gap.

In 2017-18 £120m will be allocated directly to Headteachers on the basis of the numbers of pupils in P1-S3 known to be eligible and registered for free school meals, at a rate of £1,200 per pupil. This funding is on top of the existing £50m Attainment Scotland Funding that will continue to provide targeted support to specific Scottish Attainment Challenge authorities and schools in the communities with high levels of deprivation as well as a number of national programmes

The Scottish Government has no current plans to make changes to the 1967 abortion act.

No child should be going hungry and tackling poverty and inequality is a key priority for this Government. The devastating impact of the UK Government's policy of continued austerity is clear to see and it is entirely unacceptable that, in one of the richest societies in the world, so many children are relying on the goodwill of others to keep hunger at bay. In recognition of this, the Scottish Government laid its new Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill before parliament in February of this year. The Bill will set ambitious statutory income targets to be met by 2030 and will place a new duty on Scottish Ministers, local authorities and health boards to report regularly on their progress towards reducing child poverty.

The Scottish Government has a strong record of taking action to reduce poverty and support families.

The Scottish Government has already invested over £350 million in welfare mitigation measures, in addition to its £1 million Fair Food Fund which supports projects to promote dignity and harness the social potential of food to connect people and develop sustainable solutions to food poverty.

The Scottish Government has also provided funding for free school meals for all children in primaries 1 to 3 since January 2015 and provides funding for free school meals for children beyond primary 3 when their parents or guardians are in receipt of particular qualifying benefits.

Statistics relating to all abortions taking place in Scotland, and in regard to Scottish residents, are produced on an annual basis by Information Services Division (ISD).

You can access the most recent report using the link below and information on the gestational age at which abortions in Scotland are carried out can be found in table 8.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Sexual-Health/Publications/2017-05-30/2017-05-30-Terminations-2016-Report.pdf

Statistics relating to all abortions taking place in Scotland, and in regard to Scottish residents, are produced on an annual basis by Information Services Division (ISD).

Information on the number of Scottish women travelling to England in order to access abortion services is provided in table 6.

You can access the most recent report using the link below:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Sexual-Health/Publications/2017-05-30/2017-05-30-Terminations-2016-Report.pdf

The Scottish Government’s new 10-year Mental Health Strategy was published on 30 March, and sets out our vision to improve mental health in Scotland. A key section in the Strategy deals with prevention and early intervention. That section outlines our ambition that every child and young person should have appropriate access to emotional and mental well-being support in school.

A mental health link person is available to every school, this has been achieved using various models working to meet local needs. The link worker may be a CAMHS clinician or another speciality such as a primary care worker. However the named link person will be able to contact specialist CAMHS services for advice if they have any concerns about a pupil.

Through the Scottish Attainment Challenge we have committed £750 million over the course of this parliament to close the poverty related attainment gap for our pupils from the most deprived areas. The Scottish Attainment Challenge will focus and accelerate targeted improvements in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing. The Challenge will build on the range of initiatives and programmes already in place to raise attainment and reduce inequity for children across Scotland.

The First Minister has already made clear that the Scottish Government would look into the provision of abortion in Scotland to women from Northern Ireland. The Scottish Government believes that a woman from Northern Ireland, in Scotland, should be able to access an abortion for free on the same basis as women in Scotland and we will set out shortly how that can be achieved.

The Scottish Government is continuing to work with NHS Boards to look at how improvements can be made to abortion services in Scotland.