Chamber and committees

According to reports provided by local authorities, the number of children, young people and family members accessing the funded Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services in each local authority area in the first half of 2023 was as follows (reports for the second half of 2023 are not due to be provided before May 2024):

The Scottish Government and CoSLA’s Suicide Prevention Action Plan contains a commitment to work with The Promise Scotland to engage with care experienced people to better understand what action is needed to embed suicide prevention activity in our support to children and young people in care and care leavers, whom we know are at elevated risk of suicide.

During 2023-24, this has included work to build in suicide prevention across policies which tackle the social determinants of suicide, as part of our whole of government and society approach, and maximising opportunities to support care experienced people who are suicidal through their contact with services, such as homelessness and Social Security Scotland. Our innovative partnership-led delivery model is driving the implementation of our action plan and helping to extend our reach and impact in preventing suicide among care experienced groups by bringing together partners to share resources, learning and expertise. Central to this model is our Youth Advisory Group which includes care experienced young people affected by suicide. The Group is helping to shape our suicide prevention work to ensure it can best support and meet their needs.

We are now intensively developing our 2024-25 delivery plan, working collectively with The Promise Scotland as part of the development process, and considering how together we can achieve closer alignment across our outcomes measurement. The Scottish Government and COSLA will sign-off this delivery plan in coming months.

The Scottish Government takes an evidence-based approach to tackling child poverty by ensuring that plans are underpinned by evidence and that we carefully monitor progress. The evaluation strategy summarises the approach which is split across three key areas:

(1) Careful monitoring of the four child poverty targets(relative poverty, absolute poverty, low income and material deprivation, and persistent poverty).

(2) Examination of the three drivers of poverty via the child poverty measurement framework (income from employment, cost of living, and income from social security and benefits in-kind) and

(3) monitoring impact of key interventions on child poverty.

The hyperlinks to all key documents mentioned above are included in the background note.

According to plans submitted by local authorities, the number of Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services for children, young people and their families to have received funding in each local authority area is as follows:

Based on £9 million of funding available in 2024-25, Scottish Government and ILF Scotland worked together to develop indicative options based on varying threshold sums and maximum award levels for consideration by the Co-Production Working Group. The group provided recommendations to Ministers on reopening the fund, which were accepted. The recommendations report is available at: https://ilf.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Recommendations-for-Scottish-Ministers-v01.0.pdf

The group recommend that the Fund should re-open using a ‘threshold sum’ as a key access principle. The threshold sum is the value of the local authority / Self Directed Support care package and has been used by ILF since 1993 as a proxy for level of need. Following deliberations on the group on the number of people that may be eligible at different threshold levels, the group recommend that the Fund should open with a threshold sum of £800.

The group considered that 10 hours of additional independent living focused support and assistance was meaningful in relation to the realisation of Article 19 of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (UNCRPD) and would enable a typical award to contribute to making a meaningful difference. Using the current ILF average hourly rates awarded of £22 per hour, taking 10 hours as the average, and 15 hours as the maximum, this equates to a maximum award of £330 per week.

To ensure that the Fund is affordable within the £9m allocation committed to by Ministers in the first year, each local authority area was allocated a share of 1,000 places in the Fund, with places allocated proportionately based on the size of the population and the percentage of disabled people in that area. The places allocated to each local authority is available on the ILF Scotland website: https://ilf.scot/re-opening-ilf/re-opening-frequently-asked-questions/#allocation

We have committed £9m in 2024-25 to offer up to 1,000 new applicants access to the Independent Living Fund. This initial funding takes into consideration that applications will be received and assessed over the course of the year, so that new awards will phase in as the year progresses. Funding for 2025-26, and the number of further people who will be able to access the Fund, will be agreed through the annual budget process.

The Scottish Government recognises the pressures social workers are under and are taking action to support the workforce.

We have invested in wellbeing resources. From 2021 onwards, we provided the Scottish Association of Social Work (SASW) with £296,000 to invest in a Social Work Professional Support Service. This service covers a number of professional issues, including wellbeing and resilience, and is backed by the National Wellbeing Hub.

We have also provided funding to support the social work workforce. In 2022-2023 and also in 2023-2024, we gave £22 million to councils to address the shortages of social work staff in adult services.

Currently, we are working with partners to identify ways to better support social workers, including developing a Joint Workforce Improvement Plan in conjunction with COSLA to address recruitment and retention challenges. We have also formed a Joint Social Care and Social Work/Services Workforce Taskforce to explore ways we can deliver improvements for workforces in adult and children’s social care and social work.

We will create a National Social Work Agency to provide a single national body with oversight of the social work profession. The Agency will promote workforce wellbeing and create a listening leadership culture.

The development of a new support pathway for those with experience of prostitution is a key component of “Scotland’s strategic approach to challenging and deterring men’s demand for prostitution and supporting the recovery and sustainable exit of those involved in prostitution”, published on 6 February 2024.

As part of this a hub will be established to strengthen the links between mainstream and specialist support services, in order to improve access to support for those affected, from crisis support through to support to sustainably exit from prostitution.

A pilot of the hub will begin in summer and subject to evaluation a phased national roll out will follow.

Up to 1,000 new applicants will be offered awards in 2024-25. The actual number of applications received will be monitored by ILF Scotland and Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government values the important work that childminders undertake in communities and is committed to supporting and growing the sector. We commissioned research on the reasons for the reduction in childminder numbers (a trend that is mirrored elsewhere in the UK) which was published in April 2022 and can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/childminding-workforce-trends-qualitative-research-report/

Informed by that research, we are working with the Scottish Childminding Association to address the decline in the childminding workforce via a programme of recruitment and retention work. This work has been informed by recent pilot activity and will ensure that more families have access to the unique and flexible experience of childcare that childminders can offer. This programme is expected to launch in the Spring.

We will implement a range of measures to address retention issues, ensuring that our childminders are supported with their workloads and professional development, including trialling a mentoring scheme and models of funded time off the floor to allow childminders to undertake activity such as planning and continuous professional learning.