The Scottish Government has provided £367,177 of grant funding per year to CALL Scotland in the last five years. This grant is for services which deliver a positive and enabling impact on the provision of support to children and young people, who can benefit from assistive technology or augmentative and alternative communication.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The assignment of probationer teachers to individual schools is a matter for each local authority.

Difficult decisions have had to be made to allow us to balance the Scottish Government budget while still progressing implementation of our mental health and wellbeing and other strategies from a revised direct budget of £260.3 million.

The in-year budget changes impacted on a number of planned new programmes which could not proceed as anticipated. Planned increased funding to existing programmes were also not able to be progressed. This included programmes related to Mental Health and Primary Care; regional CAMHS developments; full implementation of Coming Home; full implementation of the new Mental Welfare Commission Patient Records System; and improving prisoner mental health.

Despite the savings made, we have continued to focus on delivery of our mental health and wellbeing strategy and recently published delivery plan, which includes commitments around mental health services and specific programmes of work around learning disability and autism, and cross-cutting trauma work.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23811 on‎ 8 January 2024. 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

Personal devices owned and used by Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers do not have access to the Scottish Government’s corporate IT network or applications.

Ministers are briefed on best practice in respect of maintaining confidentiality of Scottish Government data when entering office or when a substantial change takes place.

Recently, Ministers have had dedicated briefings on Spear Phishing and the use of certain platforms. This has been done in partnership with the NCSC and Government Security Group.

Scottish Government officials met with NHS Scotland Board Chief Executives on 12 December where they discussed agency nurse staffing as one of their priority actions. This follows detailed engagement with Boards regarding the arrangements currently in place for contracting agency staffing, the outputs of which are being used to inform targeted improvement activity in this area.

Data on ADHD assessments and waiting times is not centrally held for adults or for children and young people.

Although it is the responsibility of local Health and Social Care Partnerships to put in place services to meet local needs, including the needs of adults with ADHD, the Scottish Government is engaged in work to improve access to ADHD diagnosis in Scotland.

For children and young people, we have published a National Neurodevelopmental Specification for Children and Young People which makes it clear that support should be put in place to meet their needs at the earliest opportunity, rather than be dependent on a formal diagnosis. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community based, and should be quickly and easily accessible. We are currently funding five tests of change to test and implement specific aspects of the National Neurodevelopmental Service Specification and Forth Valley is one of these areas.

For adults, the final report on the adult neurodevelopmental pathway trials, including the findings and recommendations of the trials, was published in March 2023. We have accepted the recommendations and we are working with the National Autism Implementation Team on implementation.

The Scottish Government is advised on food safety and hygiene matters by Food Standards Scotland (FSS). Retained Regulation 853/2004, Annex II, Section I and Schedule 5 of the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006 allow for the slaughter of poultry on-farm and the supply of un-eviscerated birds to approved establishments for delayed evisceration. This procedure is allowed providing such production is ‘authorised’ by FSS. No consideration has been given however to extending this to beef and lamb sectors, as there is no provision to permit this within the Regulations.

The Scottish Government is clear that stoma patients should expect an equitable level of care wherever they reside in Scotland, and the responses received from the recently concluded information gathering exercise on the provision of stoma care and stoma specialist nurse coverage across Scotland's 14 territorial health boards will be an important step in achieving that when it is considered by the Scottish Executive Nurse Directors (SEND) in early 2024.

We recognise the significant contribution that Scotland’s unpaid carers make to our communities. It is very important that people who are caring for others know how to access carer support, and that professionals know how to direct people to support.

Under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016, Local Authorities and Integration Authorities are responsible for supporting carers, according to their individual needs, and commission Third Sector organisations to provide much of that support on their behalf. This includes providing or signposting to counselling and other services that are available to them locally. Much of this vital support is delivered through local carer centres.

We are investing £88.4m per year in local carer support through local authority Carers Act funding.