Chamber and committees

Continued policy and delivery development is being undertaken on the Scottish Child Payment, including our intended approach to assessment periods. This will be set out in regulations, and these will be submitted to the Scottish Commission on Social Security for scrutiny in the autumn.

As set out in the Ministerial statement on the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan on 29 June, further work has been required to assess certain policy and delivery implications of the Scottish Child Payment.

As part of this work, we are considering a range of issues which includes assessment periods and verifying eligibility and entitlement. Our approach to this will be set out in regulations which we will submit to the Scottish Commission on Social Security in the autumn.

Such a model was considered. It was rejected for a number of reasons, including the technical complexity of designing it, the resulting risks to delivery of the other devolved benefits, and the ongoing uncertainty around delays to Universal Credit migration, which would have meant that clients awaiting migration would not be eligible to receive the Scottish Child Payment unless additional interfaces with legacy systems were also built.

In introducing the Scottish Child Payment the Scottish Government prioritised the delivery route which would deliver the benefit to the quickest timescales and with the least impact on the remaining devolved benefits. The option of an automated delivery model for Universal Credit(UC), which would have required these additional interfaces with legacy benefits for those who had not yet migrated onto UC, was considered as part of our assessment of all potential options, and discounted following discussion with senior officials and Ministers as it was not deemed to be the best fit with this objective.

The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 provides for advocacy to be available to support people with a disability to engage effectively with the Scottish social security system.

If a young person has a disability and is applying for Scottish disability assistance in their own right then they will be eligible to seek advocacy support. A parent or carer will be able to seek advocacy support to assist with their disabled child's application for assistance if they themselves identify as having a disability or if the child or young person wishes an advocacy worker's support to ensure their own voice is heard.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-24990 on 12 September 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-24990 on 12 September 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Scotland’s Census, last conducted in 2011 and next due to run in 2021, gathers population-wide data on self-reported long term conditions, including hearing loss and sight loss. A variety of reports and data are available to download including from https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/news/census-2011-release-3f-detailed-characteristics-health-scotland . Data are available for large areas, such as NHS Boards, as well as for smaller areas. They can be broken down in many different ways, including by age.

Additionally, there are a range of national surveys commissioned by the Scottish Government, including (but not limited to) the Scottish Health Survey and the Health and Care Experience Survey, which include questions on whether respondents have hearing loss or sight loss. These surveys are however based on samples of the population and, as with the census, the questions asked don’t differentiate between degrees of sight/hearing loss.

Through the work of local See Hear leads partnerships, sensory screening projects have been introduced in care homes in some local areas, for example in Perth and Kinross, Dumfries and Galloway, Angus, North Lanarkshire, Highlands, Edinburgh and Lothian, Ayrshire and Arran, Orkney and Forth Valley.

The Scottish Government is currently consulting with See Hear Leads to gather further information on the prevalence of sensory impairment and the reach of services to identify gaps and opportunities for service improvement. See Hear partnerships remain responsible for identifying local priorities, developing work streams, timescales and implementation plans, based on local priorities and need.

We are aware that some people with hearing loss go to private providers for hearing tests and provision of aids, and information on hearing loss for those people who go through the NHS is not routinely collected, so any data held by the NHS on hearing loss would not be comprehensive.

However, Action on Hearing Loss estimates there to be around 945,000 people with hearing loss in Scotland, one in six of the population, and of those, 70% are over 70.

Since 2014, Scottish Ministers have provided almost £4m to establish and support the See Hear Strategy, which is available to view on the Scottish Government website.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-22380 on 17 April 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

In addition, the Scottish Government has a commitment to promote the use and understanding of British Sign Language (BSL) as a full and proper language across the Scottish public sector, and has a BSL National Plan in place for 2017 to 2023 with 70 actions across ten long-term ambitions.

Scottish Government has provided £1m funding over the period 2016-2020 to deliver the contactSCOTLAND-BSL online interpreting Video Relay Service, which enables Deaf and Deafblind BSL users to contact Scottish public sector bodies, third sector organisations and the private sector. The service is accessible to Deafblind BSL users, by making use of braille displays and speech synthesisers. The service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We are currently considering how this service can be developed to support people who do not use BSL, including those who are deaf, deafened, deafblind or hard of hearing.

Additionally, I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-21736 on 5 March 2019.

As in 2011, the 2021 Census intends to collect information about the number of people who have “Deafness or partial hearing loss”, as well as demographic information that will provide age and location. A new question on BSL use is proposed for the 2021 Census. This will provide information about whether these people use BSL, for the first time in Scotland’s Census.

The Census does not intend to collect information about levels of hearing loss. National Records of Scotland received requests for many more questions than could reasonably be included in the census. In coming to a final selection of questions and question changes, some difficult decisions needed to be made between the benefits of different questions and question changes. The criteria used to make these decisions was published in April 2018.