Chamber and committees

Protecting children and young people from all forms of abuse is a priority for the Scottish Government, as set out in current national policy and legislation.

We recognise the impact of parental substance misuse on children and that is why we provide £600,000 per year to the CORRA Foundation who support Scottish voluntary organisations to deliver vital on the ground support to children and families across Scotland affected by substance and alcohol misuse.

The Scottish Government also provide £269,000 to Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs (SFAD) for support to families across Scotland affected by a loved one’s substance misuse

We have established a Child Protection Improvement Programme to ensure effective protection is in place for all children at risk from abuse and neglect. The Programme includes work on neglect, child sexual exploitation, internet safety, child trafficking, leadership and workforce development, joint inspections, data and evidence and the Children’s Hearings System.

In February this year the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport announced the Scottish Government’s proposed increase of minimum unit price for alcohol. We have undertaken extensive engagement with the alcohol industry on implementation; guidance products are being prepared and awareness raising measures are underway.

There are over 40 measures in our Alcohol Framework to address Scotland’s relationship with alcohol and tackle alcohol misuse and a refreshed alcohol framework will be published later in 2018.

The figures in the following table are the overall total of inspections undertaken over the past eight years. The inspection numbers detailed below are based on academic years. The figures for academic year 2017-18 are those inspections of early learning and childcare carried out to date.

In recent years, Education Scotland has re-prioritised the use of HMI resources to support the increase in school inspections and support implementation of the national programmes, including the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

Education Scotland is currently working with the Care Inspectorate to develop a shared inspection model for early learning and childcare as specified in the Scottish Government’s Education Governance: Next Steps document.

Through this single approach to inspection of early learning and childcare with the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland will contribute to 1,800 inspections per year as they support the expansion of care and learning for the youngest children in Scotland. This was announced by Education Scotland in October 2017 as part of its new approaches to improvement.

To support these developments Education Scotland will continue to recruit HM Inspectors who can undertake inspections of early learning and childcare settings.

The Mental Health Strategy 2017-27 sets out the Scottish Government’s vision to improve mental health in Scotland. There are a number of actions in the Strategy aimed at ensuring that children and young people have good mental health and that agencies act early enough when issues emerge and impact young lives. We are committed to improving access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for those children and young people who need them.

In the last quarter the average wait for CAMHS treatment was 10 weeks, but there are still too many children and young people who are experiencing waits that are too long. That is why we have invested significantly to develop mental health services and increase staffing numbers in post. We have announced an additional £150 million for mental health services over five years to help to bring down waiting times and deliver sustainable improvement to services. This includes a £54 million comprehensive package of support to improve access to mental health services for adults and children, which will provide funding for additional staff, for workforce development and for in-depth improvement support to local services. In addition, the Scottish budget 2018-19 secured an additional £5 million for CAMHS. We are developing plans that will aim to deliver whole systems transformational change across the spectrum of support that children and young people will access.

The Scottish Government is committed to fully funding the expansion to 1140 hours. This includes ensuring sustainable funding for providers delivering the funded entitlement.

The Care Inspectorate report, Scotland’s Early Learning and Childcare – Report, draws on information from the 2015-16 Early Years Scotland Annual Members Survey. The survey highlighted three common barriers to settings offering the expanded hours, including space, staffing and costs/funding.

Since the Survey, and as set out in our Blueprint for 2020 Action Plan published in March 2017, we have worked with delivery partners to take forward a range of actions which will help to address some of these concerns including:

• publishing Space to Grow , a new good practice design guide for Early Learning and Childcare, which promotes innovative design for both indoor and outdoor space;
•  increased training capacity on early years courses in colleges and universities, and we are increasing the number of ELC modern apprenticeships by 10% year on year up to 2020; and
•  We have also successfully launched phase one of our national workforce recruitment marketing campaign to positively promote careers in ELC to school leavers and are developing phase two of the campaign, focussed on career changers and parental returners.

We will introduce a new Funding Follows the Child approach in 2020. This approach will prioritise and safeguard quality provision and provide choice for parents and carers by making it more attractive for high quality providers to deliver the funded early learning and childcare entitlement. It will also ensure the financial sustainability of the sector and the rate that funded provider receive will be sustainable and reflect national policy priorities including payment of the ‘real’ Living Wage.

We are working closely with delivery partners, including representative bodies andproviders across the country, to as we develop the new Funding Follows the Child approach and the National Standard for all funded providers, which will underpin it. We will set out more details at the end of March.

Our policy on funded early learning and childcare and school deferrals is set out in 'Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 - Early Learning and Childcare: Statutory Guidance' at paragraph 60: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2014/08/2256/7 .

Local authorities also have discretion to provide funded early learning and childcare to other children as they see fit, including where they feel that an additional year of early learning and childcare would be beneficial for the child.

The Scottish Government has fully funded local authorities to enable them to meet the requirements of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, including the expansion of the entitlement to funded early learning and childcare to 600 hours. Over the period 2014-15 to 2018-19 we will have provided local authorities with nearly £810 million revenue and capital funding.

We are committed to fully funding the expansion of early learning and childcare entitlement to 1140 hours by 2020.

As part of this we will introduce a new Funding Follows the Child approach, which will ensure financially sustainable provision across all sectors and will ensure that funding provided for early learning and childcare directly supports our young children and their families.

Decisions on investing in music services are a matter for councils. Despite UK government reductions to Scotland’s budget we are increasing overall funding to local authorities, which also have an additional £77 million to spend on services as they have all increased their council tax by 3%.

No charges should be made for in school curriculum based SQA music courses.

The Music Education Partnership Group (MEPG), which is led by John Wallace and supported by the Scottish Government, has created a small task force of five MEPG members with the aim of encouraging a reversal of recent moves by a number of local authorities to impose instrumental lesson charges for out of school provision for pupils undertaking SQA music qualifications.

Police Scotland, alongside NHS Health Boards and Scottish Government funded organisations such as the Scottish Drugs Forum, have sought to increase awareness of the health related dangers of taking prescription drugs, whether genuine or counterfeit, through national warning bulletins, messages on social media and local information campaigns. We are aware of a black market for prescription and counterfeit drugs, including Alprazolam, and continue to work closely with Police Scotland on all aspects of drugs policy and enforcement, including counterfeit prescription medication.

We are committed to fully funding the expansion of early learning and childcare to 1140 hours by 2020. We are continuing to work with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), and local authorities, and we are confident that we will agree a multi-year funding package by the end of April. We are already providing substantial investment to support the expansion of the early years workforce including providing local authorities with an additional £21 million in revenue in 2017-18, and a further £52 million in 2018-19 to support the ELC workforce expansion.

435 additional graduates will be required to deliver our commitment to have an additional graduate in nurseries located in Scotland’s most deprived areas by August 2018.