Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has outlined a breakdown of an initial investment in the early actions attached to the Youth Guarantee to be allocated in 2020-21.

£30 million through local authorities to support local partnerships to deliver employability support

£10 million directly to colleges

£10 million additional funding for Developing the Young Workforce, the Scottish Government’s Youth Employment Strategy

£10 million to support pre-apprenticeship activity

We are working closely with partners to agree the detail of how this investment will support the ambitions of the Youth Guarantee. This will build on existing activities already underway in schools, colleges and universities, through Local Authorities, Skills Development Scotland, the third sector and Developing the Young Workforce, all aimed at supporting young people through the current economic climate.

Work on the employer-led implementation of the Youth Guarantee continues to be led by Sandy Begbie and across a range of partner organisations. Further details on the implementation of the Youth Guarantee will be announced in the coming weeks.

In December 2018 we published ‘ A Fairer Scotland for Disabled People: Employment Action Plan’ . In this, we outlined the actions that we will take forward with partners to achieve our ambitious commitment to half the disability employment gap in Scotland by 2038 . Success will be demonstrated by reducing the gap to 18.7p.p. (percentage points) by 2038, and in doing so increasing the employment rate of disabled people to 50% by 2023 and 60% by 2030.

The tables below show progress against these measures from our 2016 baseline until 2019 (the most recent year that data is available for).

The £100 million of funding for employment and skills support will be allocated as follows:

• Youth Guarantee: £60 million;
• National Transitional Training Fund: £25 million;
• Apprenticeships: £10 million;
• Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE): £5 million.

The delivery of these schemes builds on the strong infrastructure we have already put in place with key partners, such as Skills Development Scotland, Local Authorities, Colleges and others, to support those impacted by the crisis. We will continue to work closely with our partners to ensure support is targeted at those who need it most during Scotland’s economic recovery.

We have gone beyond our original £70 million Food Fund commitment and have now committed over £120 million to tackle food insecurity caused by the pandemic.

£57.6 million of funding was provided to local authorities to provide coordinated cross-sectoral help with food and other essentials for at risk groups from April-Sept inclusive; We have provided guidance to local authorities, who were given flexibility in how to use these funds, and shared good practice around community support.

£4.9 million has been invested to support 50 third-sector partners through direct grants. These strategic investments, focused on delivering critical national or community-based responses and include £2.1 million for FareShare to purchase and distribute food to groups and hubs (as referenced in response to S5W-31701 on 24 September 2020. A further £7.8 million has been invested in projects focused on tackling food insecurity through our Wellbeing and Supporting Communities funds

These investments are in addition to us increasing the Scottish Welfare Fund, which is placing money directly into the pockets of those who need it and continue to provide support for a range of needs including for those experiencing financial or physical barriers to food.

The Tackling Food Insecurity Team are providing regular email updates to community groups, sharing information on funding and providing guidance to organisations on any specific issues they raise.

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-31702 on 25 September 2020. 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 .

The Scottish Government assumed Executive Competence for the devolved benefits on 1 April 2020. To date the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland have delivered eight social security benefits, including four brand new forms of assistance. The most recent of these was Job Start Payment, launched on 17 August to help young people with the costs of starting a new job. We will open applications for the Scottish Child Payment in November this year, and are also on track to deliver Child Winter Heating Assistance by the end of the year, subject to getting the data we require from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

As I set out in my statement to Parliament on 1 April, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the Scottish Government, Social Security Scotland and DWP, whose support we need to transfer social security powers. As a result, we are having to rework our timetable for delivery of the remaining devolved benefits, which is a complex exercise. We need to take into account the impact of the pandemic not only on our own services, but also on the availability of health and social care professionals to bring their expertise to the co-design of disability and carer benefits at a time when many are still needed on the frontline, and on DWP’s capacity to support the transfer of social security powers. I will update Parliament later this year.

The Scottish Government does not collect figures in relation to donations made to food banks.

We have provided significant funding to the community food sector, with more than £110m having been invested to tackle food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This includes £2.1m of funding for FareShare, who are using their national redistribution network to ensure community food providers have sufficient stocks; we are holding regular meetings with stakeholders who have indicated good stock levels.

By completion of the first week in September, FareShare had provided the equivalent of over 9.1m meals throughout Scotland.

We have also provided FareShare with residual stock from the currently paused shielding programme (which provided 978,316 food boxes to those at the highest clinical risk), enabling them to provide a further 340,000 meals.

FareShare have distributed food stocks through the below formula which mirrors methodology agreed with COSLA for the allocation of food and other essentials resource to local authorities.

The £6m of funding that the Scottish Government has committed to promoting positive mental wellbeing over the course of the pandemic is as follows:

£3.8m (Announced on 27 March), which consists of:

• £2.1 million to expand the NHS 24 Mental Health Hub so that it will be available to the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• £0.5 million to expand the Breathing Space telephone helpline and web support service
• £1.2 million to provide extra capacity for Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CCBT).

£1m to roll out the Distress Brief Intervention programme on a national basis

£1m for children, young people and families (Announced on 1 May), which consists of:

• £768,000 for a relationships helpline to be delivered by The Spark counselling service
• £105,000 to support Young Scot to develop enhanced digital content and resources on mental health
• £205,000 to support 47,000 autistic people across Scotland. This consists of funding to increase capacity at the Scottish Autism Helpline, and help for the National Autistic Society to keep people in touch online during lockdown.

£200k for free access to Solihull Online (Announced on 19 May)

The priority target groups have been different across each of the 7 rounds of the charter fund, as has the way data has been captured within the target groups.

Rounds 1 – 3 (£748,108)

50 of the 84 projects (60%) self-identified as targeting older people, older people were the most common target group for these rounds.

In this evaluation projects were able to select more than one target group.

Rounds 4 – 6 (£721,131)

19 of the 86 projects (22%) identified as primarily targeting older people, once again older people were the most common target group for these rounds.

In this evaluation projects were categorized by their primary beneficiary group only.

Round 7 (£182,702)

8 out of 19 (42%) projects are doing work targeting older people and social isolation.

Social Security Scotland routinely publish information on payments issued as part of the quarterly Official Statistics release ‘Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods’. This includes information on value of payments at Local Authority level.

Information on Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods was last published on 28 July 2020 and provided information up to 31 May 2020. This publication is available from:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/best-start-grant-and-best-start-foods-high-level-statistics-to-31-may-2020/

The value of payments issued, from the launch of each benefit to 31 May 2020, for both the Scottish Borders and Scotland are shown in the following table. Best Start Grant consists of three separate payments: Pregnancy and Baby Payment, Early Learning Payment and School Age Payment.