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Scotland’s Baby Box Managing Agent, APS Group (Scotland), has continued to work with suppliers since the start of the programme to reduce the use of single use plastic in the Baby Box where possible. Currently, only items which require individual wrapping for safety or hygiene purposes are individually wrapped. This includes the baby wrap and the mattress which are packaged to ensure the important safety information is not missed and the teether which is packaged for hygiene purposes.

All clothing is delivered to APS Group (Scotland) as multiples in single protective outers (rather than individually wrapped) for protection in transit. The protective packaging included in the Baby Box is made from 50% recycled paper and is FSC accredited. Other packaging such as cardboard outers, is also recyclable.

We will continue to evaluate how Scotland’s Baby Box is helping families and continue to monitor how it can be improved. We will keep the contents under review and adapt these to meet the needs of babies and parents. This will certainly include removing single use plastics wherever possible.

The Scottish Government has consistently called for the furlough scheme to remain in place for as long as it is needed to support businesses as we move through recovery. The UK Government should make it clear to businesses and workers, well in advance of the furlough scheme ending, what further assistance will be in place to support jobs and necessary labour market transitions in sectors that are most deeply impacted by Covid. Provisional figures from HMRC show at 31st May, 173,100 jobs (7% of eligible jobs) in Scotland were being supported by the Job Retention Scheme. This is a slightly lower than the UK (8%) and a fall of 102,600 from April when 11% of eligible employments in Scotland were on the scheme.

Whilst these figures show those on furlough are reducing, there is still a significant number of jobs which continue to be supported by this scheme. The Scottish Government is doing all it can to protect Scotland’s economy and ensure that as many people as possible on furlough keep their jobs. Our ambitious 10 year National Strategy will drive Scotland’s economic transformation, helping the country recover from COVID-19 and transition to a net zero economy, prioritising investment in the industries of the future and delivering new, good and green jobs.

During the period 1 January 2021 until 9 July 2021, CalMac Ferries Ltd had over 74,130 scheduled sailings to operate. From these, there were 62 instances where a vessel from the CalMac fleet was removed from service to allow unscheduled maintenance or repair work to be carried out at a cost £6,630,344. This represents only 0.08% of those sailings. Scheduled annual overhauls are carried out when vessels are not in service.

In many instances when a vessel is removed from service, a minimal number of sailings are affected.

At 31st March 2021 there were 7816 directly employed staff within the core Scottish Government and 52 operated offices, however all staff continued to work from home where possible during this time.

Headcount and number of offices split by local authority are provided in the following table. Please note that staff may work from locations other than Scottish Government offices.

We know that high quality early learning and childcare (ELC) can make a huge difference to children’s lives, particularly those experiencing the most disadvantage. That is why we target funded ELC to two year olds who are most likely to benefit from early access. This includes children who have experienced care themselves or have a parent who has, and children whose family receive a ‘qualifying benefit’, (including out of work benefits or income-related benefits).

We estimate this eligible group equates to around a quarter of the total two year old population. Within this group there will be children who require additional support for learning and the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (‘the 2004 Act’) extends to children in funded ELC. The 2004 Act places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their children. More information on how the 2004 Act supports children in funded ELC can be found in the refreshed Statutory Guidance here: Early learning and childcare: statutory guidance - July 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

In addition to the increased number of funded hours of ELC (rising from 600 to up to 1140 hours a year from August 2021) local authorities have discretion to offer funded or subsidised ELC that goes beyond the existing legal entitlement. Local authorities can and do use this discretion to accept referrals from health visitors and other agencies for children who they believe will benefit from this provision who may not meet the statutory criteria for a 2 year old place.

The Scottish Government has also committed to expanding funded early years education to all 1 and 2 year olds, starting with children from low-income families in this Parliamentary session. As we develop future policy we will continue to consider the best way to support our youngest children with additional support needs.

The Scottish Government only collects school pupil attendance and absence information every 2 years, so no data is available for 2017-18.

Information for 2018/19 shows that for term 3 (covering the period roughly April-June) the combined authorised and unauthorised absence rate was 7.6%.

In 2019-20, schools/hubs were only open to the children and young people of keyworkers, and those who were vulnerable, in the period April to June 2020.(due to the Covid pandemic). Therefore, most children and young people were not to attend school during this period. As such, at its highest, only around 1.7% of all pupils were attending these schools/hubs at any given time during this period.

For 2020-21, for the period in question (i.e. April to June 2021), the combined rate for pupils not in school due to Covid-19 related reasons and Non-Covid-19 related reasons was 10.4%. Note that this data has been produced on a slightly different basis to the biennial National Statistics publication. For example, some pupils who are currently counted as 'not being in school' may in fact be recorded as being in attendance (e.g. pupils who were self-isolating but were able to learn from home)when the Scottish Government publishes its usual National Statistics publication on School Attendance and Absence 2020/21 which is due later this year.

Care should be made if attempting to compare results across academic years due to varying ways in how this data was gathered over the most recent academic years, together with variation in the levels of quality assurance being undertaken on the data gathered.

The current national waiting times statistics for CAMHS and Psychological Therapies do not provide a breakdown of who is waiting for specific types of treatment. Therefore, we are unable to report on specific waits for suicide prevention treatments.

A patient level data set (CAMHS and PT National Dataset) is currently under development by PHS which will provide more detail on the diagnosis and treatments received by individuals, and associated waiting times.

It is the responsibility of individual health boards to provide high quality care that is safe, effective and person-centred. If a child or young person presents as being at real and immediate risk of harm to themselves, to others, health Boards should see these people as urgent cases and prioritise seeing them regardless of where they are on a waiting list.

The option for all women aged 71 and over to self-refer for a breast screening appointment will resume once capacity in all screening centres returns to pre-Covid or close to pre-Covid levels. This is based on the recommendation of the Scottish Screening Committee, the National Screening Oversight and the Breast Screening Programme Board, all three of whom are keeping the situation under regular review. They are also working closely with Health Boards to increase appointments and meet this criteria as soon as possible.

As breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, it can occur in more than one family member by chance, and most cases of breast cancers are not hereditary. However, particular genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, can increase the risk of developing breast cancer, and these can be passed on from parent to child. Arrangements have therefore been made to ensure that women aged 71 and over can continue to be screened for the duration of the self-referral pause if they have been identified as being at very high risk because they have BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

We also continue to emphasise that everyone should remain symptom aware and report any symptoms to their GP immediately for these to be investigated.

Information on the number of patients within NHS Scotland who were waiting for diagnostic procedures as of 31 March can be found here:

NHS waiting times - diagnostics - Quarter ending 31 March 2021 - NHS waiting times - diagnostics - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The information shows the number of patients waiting for diagnostic procedures up to 31 March 2021. Diagnostic treatment at 1 July 2021 will be published by PHS on 24 August 2021 and can be found using the same link.

The annual teacher census collects information on the basis of teaching posts, not people. Some teachers hold multiple posts which may mean the information held does not represent the nature of an individual teacher’s employment contract or the overall working pattern of that teacher.

Employment type in the following table relates to each post that a teacher holds, rather than their employment contract. This means that a teacher may have a permanent employment contract with the local authority but be recorded with a temporary employment type for an individual post.