- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 27 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 8 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how much funding it has provided to Winning Scotland to fund its Planet Youth in Scotland programme in each year since the programme was established.
Answer
The Scottish Government are funding a total of £1.5 million to Winning Scotland for Planet Youth. This is £750,000 per year in financial years 2023-24 and 2024-25.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 27 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 8 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how many successful reductions of substance abuse have been produced by the Planet Youth pilot scheme, compared with the rates of reduction produced by pre-existing anti-substance abuse campaigns.
Answer
Planet Youth is a long term, upstream preventative approach and as such we would not yet expect to see a reduction in the substance use. The purpose of the pilot, which only started last year, is to build capacity in local communities to allow them to better use and understand data directly from their young people. There is significant evidence from Iceland that the approach works to reduce the number of young people engaging in health harming behaviours, and in increasing the age of first use. The pilot should allow us to ascertain the challenges and opportunities in transferring this model to Scotland, thanks to the 6 local areas who are pioneering the approach. There is an ongoing learning evaluation which will be published after the pilot ends in March 2025. Preliminary findings indicate there has been progress so far both in terms of taking a whole systems approach and at a community level. We are also seeing increasing interest in investing in prevention at a national and local level. It is clear from the numbers that pre-existing campaigns on substance use among teenagers are not as effective as we would like, hence the investment in a longer term, more systemic approach. There may be a misunderstanding about what Planet Youth is and colleagues from national charity Winning Scotland, who are facilitating Planet Youth in Scotland, would be happy to provide more information to interested members.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 8 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it has taken to tackle the so-called evidence gap in assessing rural poverty and deprivation, as described in the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation’s
Rural deprivation: Evidence summary, which was published in November 2016.
Answer
The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation rural deprivation evidence summary included sections describing the main issues associated with using SIMD in rural areas, as well as ways of overcoming these through using the wide range of available data sources alongside SIMD for exploring particular topics or communities of interest. The evidence summary was published alongside two case studies Fuel poverty in Dumfries and Galloway and Child poverty in the Orkney Islands which illustrated how this could be done. The SIMD 2020 introductory booklet included a case study on using SIMD in a rural area.
Scottish Government has also published (or funded) a number of reports and resources on poverty and deprivation in rural areas, including Poverty in rural Scotland: evidence review, The cost of remoteness - reflecting higher living costs in remote rural Scotland when measuring fuel poverty: research report, National Islands Plan Survey: final report, Improving our understanding of child poverty in rural and island Scotland, A design based approach to understanding and tackling rural child poverty,Scottish Islands Survey 2023: main findings,Rural Scotland data dashboard: overview and Review of evidence on rural community interventions.
The Scottish Government Office of the Chief Social Policy Adviser has recently funded a UKRI/ESRC Policy Fellow to carry out research on trends in rural and island poverty.
National Records of Scotland are in the process of developing the 2022 Census-based household level deprivation indicator which will allow analysis of key household variables by deprivation for very small geographies.
There are numerous other reports and resources produced by a range of external stakeholder organisations.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 17 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how many NHS boards currently deliver the Family Nurse Partnership programme.
Answer
The Family Nurse Partnership has been carefully scaled up with quality since its introduction in 2010 and Scotland became the first country in the world to deliver FNP at scale in 2018.
The programme is delivered in 11 mainland health boards as follows:
- NHS Ayrshire and Arran
- NHS Borders
- NHS Dumfries and Galloway
- NHS Fife
- NHS Forth Valley
- NHS Grampian
- NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde
- NHS Highland
- NHS Lanarkshire
- NHS Lothian
- NHS Tayside
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 17 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenni Minto on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how many women have enrolled in the Family Nurse Partnership programme since its introduction, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
Over 13,100 families have benefited from the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme since it began in 2010 with, on average, over 81% of mothers offered the programme taking it up.
NHS Board | Number of clients enrolled (1st April 2011 - 31st March 2024) |
NHS Ayrshire and Arran | 930 |
NHS Borders | 281 |
NHS Dumfries and Galloway | 185 |
NHS Fife | 1196 |
NHS Forth Valley | 628 |
NHS Grampian | 738 |
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde | 2234 |
NHS Highland | 458 |
NHS Lanarkshire | 1677 |
NHS Lothian | 2713 |
NHS Tayside | 2069 |
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 23 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to the question S6W-03645 by Ben Macpherson on 26 October 2021, whether it can provide an update on the number of Funeral Support Payments that have been made for each year since 2021.
Answer
Social Security Scotland routinely releases information on Funeral Support Payment including applications received, application outcomes and payments.
The latest statistics show that 6,100 payments were made in 2021-22 financial year, 5,020 payments were made in 2022-23 financial year and 6,735 payments were made in 2023-24 financial year. The latest published statistics cover to 30 June 2024 and show that 1,510 payments had been issued in the first three months of the 2024-25 financial year.
The latest statistics publication for this benefit can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Funeral Support Payment Statistics.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 23 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government how many Funeral Support Payment applications have been (a) approved and (b) rejected in each year since 2021.
Answer
Social Security Scotland routinely releases information on Funeral Support Payment including applications received, application outcomes and payments.
The following table shows total applications processed and the application outcomes by financial year since 2021-22.
Financial Year | Total applications processed | Authorised applications | Denied applications | Withdrawn applications |
2021-22 | 8,550 | 6,565 | 1,150 | 835 |
2022-23 | 7,815 | 5,390 | 1,450 | 975 |
2023-24 | 10,595 | 7,145 | 1,910 | 1,540 |
2024-25* | 2,290 | 1,620 | 420 | 250 |
*Note: The 2024-25 financial year only covers data until the end of June 2024.
The latest statistics publication for this benefit can be found at: Social Security Scotland - Funeral Support Payment Statistics.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 23 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government whether it reviews the Funeral Support Payment on an annual basis in response to reported inflationary rises of funeral costs.
Answer
Scottish Ministers are under an annual statutory duty to consider and report on the impact of inflation on the rate of Funeral Support Payment, and to bring forward legislation to increase the payment in line with that report. In 2024-25 the flat rate was increased by 6.7%, in line with September CPI. The higher flat rate payment is £1,257.75 and the lower flat rate is £153.50.
The UK Government equivalent, Funeral Expenses Payment, does not increase annually in line with inflation.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 23 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 1 October 2024
To ask the Scottish Government in what ways it evaluates the efficacy of the Funeral Support Payment.
Answer
The Scottish Government published the Funeral Support Payment evaluation in July 2022, which found that the payment reduced the need for people to borrow money to arrange a funeral.
Social Security Scotland’s annual client survey monitors the impact of benefit payments. Respondents to the most recent survey in 2022-23 rated Funeral Support Payment an average of 8.7 out of 10 when asked to rate how much benefit payments had helped make a difference to their lives.
We are committed to continually improving Scottish benefits. As a result of evaluation findings and learnings since Funeral Support Payment was launched in 2019, we have recently introduced regulations into Parliament to make improvements to the payment, further supporting bereaved people.
- Asked by: Tim Eagle, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Monday, 23 September 2024
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Current Status:
Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 30 September 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the campaign to strengthen the Funeral Support Payment by (a) the Caledonian Funeral Aid and (b) Quaker Social Action.
Answer
The Scottish Government is committed to providing financial support for bereaved people on a low-income.
Funeral Support Payment has provided £51.1 million of support to over 26,000 people since launching in September 2019. The average award for 2024-25, up to 30 June 2024, is £2,065. There is a statutory duty to uprate the payment and in 2024/25 we increased the flat rate payment by 6.7%.
We are committed to continually reviewing and improving Funeral Support Payment; we substantially widened eligibility compared to the UK Government’s Funeral Expenses Payment at launch and have recently introduced legislation to make further improvements.
