Seòmar agus comataidhean

Scottish Governments priority is to ensure that displaced people who are already here, and those who have applied and are granted permission to travel, are able to stay in appropriate temporary accommodation and get the right support ahead of moving into safe, sustainable longer-term accommodation.

The Scottish Government has also made available £11.2 million in funding to help local authorities increase their teams to help people with temporary resettlement into communities across Scotland, and also to invest in making improvements to housing stock so that there are more homes available for Ukrainians to move into. We have also provided a further £1.3 million to the Scottish Refugee Council to enable it to increase its capacity and extend invaluable help and support to arriving Ukrainians, many of whom will have experienced significant trauma.

We are taking significant action to increase our temporary accommodation capacity as well as boosting our matching system to maximise the number of people who can be placed with volunteer hosts who have completed the necessary safeguarding checks. We have, for example, chartered a second passenger ship, M/S Ambition, to be located in Glasgow. The ship should be fully operational in September, and it will provide up to a further 1750 people with the same level of facilities and support currently available to those on the M/S Victoria in Edinburgh.

Due to the urgent need to respond to a humanitarian crisis, the Scottish Government undertook rapid engagement with relevant organisations prior to and immediately after taking the decision to support displaced persons from Ukraine.

To address stakeholder concerns around the speed of the UK Government’s private matching scheme, as well as safeguarding issues, the Scottish Government and COSLA agreed to commit to an initial triage of 3000 displaced people from Ukraine through a Super Sponsor Scheme. This provided a fast and safe alternative to private sponsorship, meaning people could travel immediately and be provided with temporary accommodation, meals and a range of support and advice including translation, assessing medical needs (such as trauma) and applying for benefits.

The process of matching of arrivals from Ukraine has drawn on COSLA’s extensive experience. Such as with the Syrian Resettlement Programme, which saw all 32 local authorities in Scotland participate and welcome over 3,300 refugees into their communities.

The Scottish Government’s Super Sponsor Scheme has now offered sanctuary to over 10,000 displaced people from Ukraine to travel to safety in Scotland, far exceeding the original commitment and providing sanctuary for people who otherwise could not have travelled were it not for the Super Sponsor Scheme.

Pay for council workers, excluding teachers, is determined through negotiations at the Scottish Joint Committee (SJC). These negotiations take place between the trade unions (UNISON, Unite and GMB) and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), who act on behalf of Scotland’s 32 councils.

The Scottish Government continues to urge both parties to continue negotiations via the SJC in order to achieve a negotiated settlement which avoids industrial action.

The mental health and emotional wellbeing of all children in Scotland is a key priority for the Scottish Government. The 2017-2027 Mental Health Strategy committed to ensuring everyone across Scotland was able to access the right support in a way which best met their individual circumstances. This included support to children and young people as a whole as well as a specific focus on specific challenges. As part of this, the Strategy committed to supporting work aimed specifically at the mental health needs of veterans and their families. This is being taken forward through the Veterans Mental Health and Wellbeing Action Plan.

Over the course of the pandemic, we put in place a variety of measures to support children and young people. These included supporting children struggling emotionally and providing advice and support to parents through Parent Club and the Solihull Online child development programmes. These resources provide families with easy ways to support their mental health and wellbeing through Covid restrictions and beyond.

We continue to invest in a range of measures to support children and young people in looking after their own mental health and wellbeing. This includes providing enhanced digital resources on mental health and wellbeing available via the ‘Aye Feel’ website and social marketing campaigns, managed by Young Scot. We are also committed to improving access to community mental health and wellbeing support. We have provided local authorities with an additional £15 million per annum to fund over 230 new and enhanced supports and services for children and young people across Scotland.

The Scottish Government does not hold this data.

The recruitment and employment of teachers in local authority schools are matters for individual councils, as they have the statutory duty for education expenditure and to deliver education.

Councils have the responsibility for providing a complement of teachers and other education staff which best meets the needs of their schools and pupils within the resources available. This includes providing a complement of teachers and headteachers which meets the needs of their schools and pupils in light of their local needs and circumstances.

With regard to teacher numbers, whilst the Scottish Government does not hold data on teacher employment, you may wish to note that the Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group (TWPAG) undertakes an annual exercise to forecast the likely requirement for new teachers which sets the target intakes for initial teacher education programmes in both primary and secondary by subject. COSLA are represented on the TWPAG which is jointly chaired by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Council of Deans of Education. The modelling outputs from the TWPAG use projections on pupil rolls and teacher census information. Whilst we now have more teachers than at any time since 2008, we are aware some LAs continue to find recruitment challenging in some subjects and in some geographical areas.

During the pandemic the Scottish Government provided £240 million of additional investment to local authorities to support the recruitment of additional education staff to support education recovery. We are also providing additional permanent funding of £145.5 million per year to support the recruitment of these extra teachers.

The Scottish Government introduced a fit and proper person test as part of the Mobile Home Site Licencing Scheme, set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 and introduced in 2017. The fit and proper person test applies to all site licence holders, site owners and anyone directly managing a site.

Savings in carbon emissions from replacement of Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) rolling stock are calculated using emission rates from the DfT’s TAG Databook A3.3 (November 2021). This is undertaken when each individual project or line of route reaches the Outline Business Case stage of development.

The childcare workforce has grown overall as a result of the ELC expansion, with the latest data showing an increase of 26% between 2016 and 2020. The Scottish Social Services Council’s Stability Index (i.e. the proportion of staff who have been retained from the previous year) shows a Stability Index of 78.9% for the day care of children workforce, broadly similar to the overall Index of 80.8% for social services.

Throughout the ELC expansion the Scottish Government has taken a range of actions with partners to support recruitment and retention across all parts of the childcare sector. Those include: working with skills bodies and training providers to increase enrolments on training courses by 25.6% between 2017 and 2020; delivery of a national recruitment campaign, attracting high quality individuals to all parts of the sector; and enabling payment of the Real Living Wage to staff delivering funded hours.

The Scottish Government has read BASC Scotland’s report on Community Integrated Deer Management in Scotland with interest. We greatly value the contribution of local deer stalkers, their skill set and those involved in the management of deer across Scotland.

We are focusing our efforts on progressing the recommendations made in the independent Deer Working Group (DWG) report, published in December 2020. The DWG report made recommendations to improve Scotland’s systems of deer management and included consideration of the points made in BASC Scotland’s report such as, training for deer managers, availability of deer larders and engagement with local communities.

A project board has been established under the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Programme to progress these recommendations. As the board sets priorities and works to progress these recommendations we will be working with stakeholders, such as BASC, for their views on key issues.

Furthermore, the Scottish Government has provided £80,000 via the Scotland Food & Drink Covid Recovery Fund to support development of local chills and/or primary processing (deer larders). We expect that up to three projects could be supported from the fund as part of a pilot exercise.

The Social Work Strategic Forum commissioned a research project in 2016 into the public perception of social services in Scotland. Overall, the research findings suggested a good level of support for social services in Scotland and a reasonable level of literacy among respondents about what social services do. The findings also suggested that the public has a much more positive view of social services than social service workers and institutions perceive. Overall, people in Scotland are positive about social services’ impact on society and believe these services perform an important public role.

The Scottish Social Services Awards have been held annually since 2017 (except in 2020 due to COVID-19) and provide an opportunity to recognise the social work and social care workforce, raise the profile of the sector, demonstrate that it is valued and highlight the commitment and innovative approaches of those who work within it.

Under current arrangements, the Scottish Government sets the overall strategic framework for social work delivery. The majority of social workers are employed by councils with terms and conditions set by individual employers, resulting in local variations in pay and grading. There is no single national body which has oversight and leads social workers’ professional development, education, improvement, data and workforce planning.

The recently published National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will establish a new National Social Work Agency, which will support and invest in the social work profession by providing national leadership, and overseeing and supporting social work in a range of areas, including: workforce planning, improvement and social work terms and conditions. In establishing the National Social Work Agency, the Scottish Government will work with frontline social workers, their representative bodies and the wider social work and social care sector to raise the profile of the sector and promote understanding of the role of social workers.