Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally, as local authorities and integration authorities have legal duties to provide carer support under the Carers Act. In practice they commission third sector organisations, including carer centres, to provide much of that support on their behalf. The 2020-21 budget contained an additional £11.6 million and the 2021-22 budget a further increase of £28.5 million in the local government settlement for Carers Act implementation. Added to similar (baselined) increases in previous years since the Act came into force in April 2018, this brings the total investment in the Carers Act for 2021-22 to £68 million per year. It is for local authorities and integration authorities to decide how to use the funding to meet their duties under the Carers Act, but it is expected that this will include providing additional funding to carer centres and other organisations commissioned to expand carer support.

The previous Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport wrote to local authorities in March 2021 to highlight the importance of using this additional funding to expand carer support: www.gov.scot/publications/carers-act-finance-2021-2022-letter

Alongside funding for the Carers Act, the Scottish Government also funds the Time to Live scheme, administered by Shared Care Scotland, to enable local carer organisations to provide small grants for carers to spend on short breaks or something that gives them a break from caring. In recent years, £490,000 per year has been allocated to this scheme but in response to the pandemic, the Scottish Government put an additional £910,000 into the scheme in 2020-21 and has committed a further £400,000 in 2021-22.

In April 2020, we established a £500,000 fund to help local carer organisations transition to home working, so they could continue to provide advice and emotional support remotely, such as telephone counselling and online sessions.

In March 2021 the Scottish Government also provided over £24,000 of funding to 28 local carer organisations, who requested assistance with the cost of informing carers about how to access priority Covid-19 vaccinations.

The Scottish Government’s message to those experiencing domestic abuse is very clear– you are not alone, you do not have to wait and you should not hesitate to come forward and get support.

Equally Safe is Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls including domestic abuse. Our Equally Safe strategy continues to have a decisive focus on preventing gender based violence and tackling the underlying attitudes that perpetuate it. A refresh of our Equally Safe Delivery Plan and Strategy is underway. This will build on the many achievements of the previous iteration.

We are providing direct support for specialist services to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and driving improvements in the justice sector’s response. As announced in the Programme for Government, we will invest £100 million to support frontline services and focus on prevention of violence against women and girls from school onwards. We will also invest in services which support male survivors of rape and domestic abuse.

Within the first 100 days of this government, new funding totalling £5M went to rape crisis centres and domestic abuse services to cut waiting lists. It comprised approximately £4.5 million split between Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland, and a total of £500,000 for 12 other specialist support services and organisations. We created a new Delivering Equally Safe Fund (£19m per annum) and have recently confirmed allocations to 121 projects from 112 organisations working to provide services and prevent gender-based violence and abuse. Last year we allocated an additional £5.75 million to frontline services to support rapid redesign and enable them to respond to an increase in demand from victims of abuse attributed to the pandemic.

The Equally Safe strategy can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/equally-safe-scotlands-strategy-prevent-eradicate-violence-against-women-girls/

The Equally Safe Delivery Plan final report can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/equally-safe-final-report/

The Caledonian System provides rehabilitation services to male perpetrators of domestic violence to address and challenge their harmful behaviours. We plan to increase our investment in it to £10 million over the next two years and to support the national rollout of the system with the aim of making it available to all 32 Scottish local authorities by the end of the parliamentary term.

We have established a Place Based Investment Programme, backed with £325 million capital investment over 5 years, to accelerate ambitions for place, 20-minute neighbourhoods, town centre revitalisation and community led regeneration. This programme will include support for repurposing of land and buildings, creating new space for local enterprises, facilities and services and support the resilience and wellbeing of communities across Scotland.

We have also launched a £10 million multi-year Scotland Loves Local Fund to support local people, businesses and community partnerships to bring new ideas and activity to towns and neighbourhoods to support local economic recovery and resilience.

The Town Centre Action Plan and our UK-leading town centre first approach provide a framework for those working to revitalise town and neighbourhood centres so that they can become more diverse, sustainable and thriving places for communities to live, work and enjoy. An independent review which considered the impact and lessons from the Town Centre Action Plan and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was published in February 2021. We are working collaboratively with COSLA and partners to respond to the review.

We support Scotland's Towns Partnership to work with local authorities, communities and businesses to provide information, support and services which contribute to the vibrancy, viability and diversity of our town centres and neighbourhoods, and to support the development of Business Improvement Districts.

To support the small businesses that will be vital to the recovery of our towns and high streets, we will maintain the Small Business Bonus Scheme for the lifetime of the Parliament - ensuring that 100,000 business properties pay no rates and that the majority of ratepayers continue to pay a lower poundage than elsewhere in the UK.

Our City Centre Recovery Task Force is working to identify innovative actions aimed at assisting city centres through their economic recovery. To kick-start the Task Force, we invested £2 million in a City Centres Recovery Fund. This has supported innovative actions with a focus on inclusive and sustainable growth to aid the recovery of our city centres.

Family Fund administers the Take a Break Scotland fund on behalf of the Scottish Government. Currently, it is one of four programmes which make up the annual £3 million voluntary sector Short Breaks Fund. During the period 2011-12 to 2021-22, 21,131 Take a Break Scotland grants have been provided to carers (please see the breakdown below for each year). The higher numbers of grants in 2020-21 and 2021-22 is due to additional funding provided to meet extra demand during the pandemic. It must be highlighted that this is the number of grant applications funded, and there may be more than one carer benefiting from each grant.

Number of Short Break grants provided by the Take a Break Scotland fund.

Self-directed Support (SDS) is Scotland’s mainstream approach to social care, applying to both children and adults and enshrined in law through The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013. This approach to social care has been chosen to ensure individuals are empowered to be equal partners in their care and support decisions and to participate in social and economic life. It is, however, focused on social care and support, rather than access to health services. As such, the Scottish Government does not currently have plans to develop a self-directed support scheme for young people to access mental health services.

However, the Scottish Government continues to invest heavily to ensure a range of mental health support is available to children and young people, in line with their needs.

Our work with children and young people’s organisations - monitoring surveys, research and referral rates – helps Scottish Government and our partners to incorporate the lived experience and views of children and young people into our policy and service design processes; as we seek to ensure that the right help and support is available.

We continue to invest in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) which support children and young people in need of specialist mental health support, and have invested an additional £40 million in CAMHS services this year.

We have also provided £15 million of additional funding to local authorities to deliver locally based mental health and wellbeing support for 5-24 year olds in their communities. This includes funding new and enhanced community mental health and wellbeing services for 5-24 year olds with a focus on prevention, early intervention and the treatment of distress.

In addition we continue to prioritise support for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing in schools, including developing and delivering new mental health training and learning resources, and £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services.

Furthermore, we continue to invest in a range of other measures to support children and young people’s mental wellbeing. This includes providing enhanced digital resources on mental health and wellbeing available via Young Scot’s website and expansion of the Distress Brief Intervention programme to under 16s.

The information requested by Mr Briggs MSP is readily available on the SSSC website, and a detailed breakdown by local authority can be obtained directly from the official source.

Every year in August, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) publishes the ‘Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2020 Workforce Data’. This year's edition was the 10th set of official statistics. Official figures, therefore, only go back to 2011.

According to the most recent data, published in August this year, as of December 2020, there were 6,049 social workers employed in local authorities, the highest number recorded, representing a 1.5% increase since the previous year, 2019, or a 6% increase since 2011.

Every public information campaign has a unique set of objectives and associated target audience.

The Scottish Government carries out research to ascertain the most effective strategy and messaging for all public information campaigns.

In some cases, a well-known public figure can deliver a message in a more compelling way thus increasing the potential impact of the campaign. Where that is the case, the Scottish Government consider various options recommended by their rostered agencies based on the personality and profile of the celebrity required and appointments are made based on suitability, availability and level of budget (if any) required.

A new protocol is being created and put in place by the Scottish Government to improve the approach to vetting public figures used in campaigns. This protocol will improve the sharing of knowledge between public sector bodies and the Scottish Government central communications function regarding the use of public figures.

At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Scottish Government and partners began rapid, ground breaking joint work with the Scottish manufacturing sector to build resilient local supply chains.

The Scottish Parliament and people have been updated on the success of our efforts to develop local supply chains through our PPE Action Plan and Ministerial statements I made on PPE and other critical supplies, the COVID vaccine and test, treatment and cures being developed and manufactured in Scotland.

This work ultimately ensured we had adequate stocks of all Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items, ventilation equipment, sanitiser, testing kits and vaccines to support our front line services and protect the public during the emergency period.

From a starting position of almost all PPE having to be imported, over the 2020/21 winter period nearly half of all PPE supplied to NHS Scotland was manufactured in Scotland. While we do not hold a central definitive supplier list, some key examples of Scottish suppliers who responded to our COVID -19 supply chain initiative are listed in the following table.

Self-directed Support (SDS) is Scotland’s mainstream approach to social care. Under the Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 , all people in Scotland who are assessed as being in need of social care support have a right to choice, control and flexibility to meet their personal outcomes.

SDS is therefore not something that is applied for or denied. Local Authorities are required to ensure that people are offered a range of choices on how they receive their social care support.

Self-directed Support can be provided using one of four different options. Public Health Scotland statistics from 2018-19 indicate that 102,805 people in Scotland were involved in choosing and controlling their support through one of more of the self-directed support options.

In the Programme for Government announced on 7 September 2021 the Scottish Government committed to developing options to remove charging for non-residential social care. We are working to deliver these as soon as possible.