Chamber and committees

Scotland’s ‘Getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) approach underpins the delivery of high-quality universal and targeted support through a single, coordinated approach to planning across education, social work, and health and social care; and between public services, the third sector and community partners.

The GIRFEC approach recognises that children, young people and their families need to know who they can contact when they require support. The named person, Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC): practice guidance 2 – role of the named person - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) or equivalent role, provides a clear point of contact within universal services for information, advice or help. A named person can provide or help families access further information on practical support from within their own service, or request support from other services or agencies across the community. For school-aged children, the named person is usually a head or senior teacher.

The non-statutory GIRFEC Child’s Plan remains an important element in the ways children’s and related services can work in a co-ordinated way to support the wellbeing of children, young people and their families. Using the GIRFEC approach, practitioners and lead professionals should support a child or young person's wellbeing by working alongside them and their family, and other practitioners involved in supporting their wellbeing. Where a child or young person is supported through a GIRFEC Child’s Plan, the lead professional Lead professional - Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) offers families a single point of contact who can work with them and any multi-agency team to help co-ordinate support and help everyone understand their respective roles in implementing the plan.

GIRFEC provides the foundation for all of the Scottish Government’s policies to ensure that children and young people receive the right support, at the right time. This includes Scotland’s legislative approach to collaborative local strategic planning. Children’s Services Planning duties are set out in Part 3 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. This requires services and support to be planned and delivered in a way which delivers on national and local priorities and meets the statutory aims of Children’s Services Planning, including the aim to ensure that support is experienced as joined-up from the point of view of children and families.

Each local authority and Health Board must work collaboratively with specified service providers, other public bodies, the third sector, and children, young people and families to develop their Children’s Services Plan (CSP). Each Children’s Services Planning Partnership (CSPP) has a multi-agency strategic governance group of local senior leaders, who are responsible for their CSP. This includes publishing an annual report to demonstrate what progress has been made to improve outcomes for children, young people and families living in that area.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 provides the legal framework for identifying and addressing the additional support needs of children and young people who face a barrier, or barriers, to learning. Parents, children, and young people have the right to ask for an assessment of whether additional support is required. Local authorities and other agencies should ensure that parents are fully aware of the processes for assessing and providing for children’s additional support needs, understand the planning approaches and are familiar with the support services available from the school, the education authority and from other agencies.

Scottish Ministers also fund Enquire, the national advice and information service on additional support for learning. Enquire operate a telephone helpline providing confidential and tailored advice to parents and carers on their children’s circumstances and rights to support. They have a range of resources and signposting on their website seeking to ensure that families can access the most appropriate support.

The Scottish Government recognises that parents and carers are the primary educators of their children and it is best practice for schools, local authorities and parents to work in partnership to ensure the best learning outcomes for children and young people. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 places responsibility on State Parties to provide appropriate assistance to parents and legal guardians in performing their parental responsibilities to guarantee and promote the rights set out in the Convention.

An update to the Learning together national action plan: update - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) was co-published with COSLA in December 2023. This is an update setting out an overarching framework that brings together relevant policies and guidance to support education authorities to develop parental involvement strategies, as set out in the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006. It sets out a vision for parental involvement, engagement, family learning and learning at home.

The Scottish Government is working in partnership with Clackmannanshire, Dundee and Glasgow to tackle child poverty through transforming the way public services are delivered. These partnerships are testing and embedding a deeper, person-centred approach which meets families where they are and seeks to move them out of poverty on a sustained basis.

This has included close working with schools and nurseries, such as:

• Close partnership with the Early Adopter School Aged Childcare Pilot in Dundee, to facilitate access to childcare for parents supported by the Dundee Pathfinder
• A family supper club in Rowantree Primary School in Dundee, which provides access to support services and hot evening meals.
• Financial Inclusion Support Officers based in primary and secondary schools in Glasgow
• ‘Community Around the School’ in Clackmannanshire, featuring a broad range of partners involved in reading, numeracy and confidence skills at Alloa Academy

Across the 3 partnerships, over 3000 families have benefited from direct support, with changes to how services are designed and delivered set to benefit many more.

The Scottish Government are also providing local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health and wellbeing supports and services for children, young people and their families. The Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services Framework, which underpins this funding, encourages education, health, wider children’s services, youth work and the third sector to work together and take a whole-system approach to supporting children, young people and their families.

The mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) is to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. The national operational guidance for Pupil Equity Funding to schools is clear that parents, carers and the local community are valuable sources of support, expertise and experience in working with children and young people experiencing poverty-related barriers to learning. In many contexts, particularly in rural areas, or within special schools or Additional Support Needs (ASN) provisions, schools may be able to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and young people by working with a range of bodies such as:

• parent groups
• parent councils
• other local authority and public sector services (such as community learning & development)
• third sector organisations (including youth work, family learning organisations)
• centres of expertise

The Scottish Government is providing £18 million funding in 2024-25 through our Children, Young People, Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities (CYPFEI & ALEC) and Children, Young People, Families and Adult Learners (CYPFAL) third sector funds to support children, families and communities.

In addition to this, Children’s Services Planning is Scotland’s legislative approach to collaborative local strategic planning and delivery of services and support, to ensure this is delivered in a way which improves wellbeing outcomes for children, young people and families living in each area. Children’s Services Planning duties are set out in Part 3 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014.

Children’s Services Planning Partnerships are key to driving a holistic and whole systems approach in the local area, which embeds Getting it right for every child, delivers holistic whole family support, as well as action to Keep the Promise.

Safe and legal routes are crucial to enabling people to seek safety when forced to flee war and persecution. We will continue to engage with the UK Government on issues which impact people living in Scotland, including refugees, people seeking asylum and displaced people. This engagement includes sharing lessons from the experience of over 27,000 Homes for Ukraine visa-holders arriving in Scotland, over 21,000 of which were sponsored by the Scottish Government. We also hope other governments can learn from our work implementing the pioneering New Scots refugee integration strategy; which is a UK-leading integration approach built on a partnership led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and Scottish Refugee Council. We look forward to working closely with the UK Government to deliver a system that is effective and more humane.

The Marine Directorate has recorded no collisions between its Marine Protection Vessels and (a) whales, (b) dolphins, (c) porpoises, (d) basking sharks, (e) seals and (f) other large marine species since 2021, and is not aware of any collisions.

It is important we work together to understand and plan for coastal change. The Scottish Government’s Dynamic Coast (DC) project is helping us understand the erosion threat to Scotland’s coast including in the Highlands and Islands.

DC2 assesses coastal erosion rates nationally and considers how these rates might be exacerbated by climate change. This report has been published and can be found at the following link;

https://www.crew.ac.uk/dynamic-coast

Throughout the project, we have worked closely with local authorities, including in the Highland and Islands, to help them plan for coastal adaptation. To support them, we have provided an additional £11.7 million of funding for coastal change adaptation from 2022-23 to 2025-26.

In 2024-25, the funding of £2.7m will be distributed to local authorities in two ways. £1.65m in direct allocation to coastal local authorities including the Highlands and Islands and £1.05m for case studies, including a study in Nairn looking at monitoring coastal data.

If passed by the Scottish Parliament, the Bill will allow Ministers to consider the impact on the local community of certain sales of land over 1000 hectares before the sale can proceed.

Ministers may decide that the landholding should be sold as separate lots, though this is not expected to be appropriate in all cases.

The Bill sets out a process for landowners to apply for a review of a Ministerial lotting decision as well as appeal and compensation processes.

More details on this issue can be read in paragraphs 109 to 134 of the Policy Memorandum accessible (parliament.scot).

The European Convention on Human Rights is fundamental to our legal framework in Scotland. Our proposals in the Bill are fully compliant with the ECHR, including the right to private property.

More details on the consideration of the effect of the provisions of the Bill on human rights can be found in the Policy Memorandum accessible (parliament.scot).

As this is a matter for SEPA, outlined in answer to S6W-28593, the Scottish Government does not hold the information being requested. I will therefore ask SEPA to write to the member to provide any further detail on the matter, where it is available.

Land is key to ensuring that rural and island communities can thrive, to giving people places to live and work, to providing essential infrastructure that people need and to help us keep people on the land.

When land is transferred at scale this makes it more difficult for communities and others to purchase land, as the supply of smaller and more affordable plots of land is restricted. This can be detrimental to the sustainability of those communities.

Further information on the transfer test proposals in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill can be found in the Policy Memorandum (parliament.scot)

Accessibility obligations for taxi and private hire car drivers and Local Licencing Authorities are reserved to the UK Government under the Equality Act 2010.

However, the taxi licensing system is devolved under the Civic Government Act 1982 and is implemented by (local authority) licensing authorities. Therefore, the day-to-day administration of the licensing regime for taxis and private hire cars rests with independent local licensing authorities, who are best placed to take local circumstances into account in the decision making process to ensure that they provide safe and appropriate services for members of the public.