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Updated guidance on the use of mobile phone technologies in schools is expected to be published in Spring 2024. The current guidance to education authorities and schools on this issue remains available from Guidance on Developing Policies to Promote the Safe and Responsible Use of Mobile Technology in Schools (www.gov.scot).

The Scottish Government has provided £367,177 of grant funding per year to CALL Scotland in the last five years. This grant is for services which deliver a positive and enabling impact on the provision of support to children and young people, who can benefit from assistive technology or augmentative and alternative communication.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23817 on 8 January 2024. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

We are working with NHS Boards to maximise current resources and productivity to reduce long waits, which have been exacerbated by the impacts of the global pandemic. We remain committed to reducing waiting times year on year across the NHS as set out in the Policy Prospectus .

We are working to implement the commitments of our Neurological Care and Support – National Framework for Action 2020-25 , to improve the provision of co-ordinated health and social care and support, develop sustainable workforce models and ensure high standards of person-centred care. Since October 2020, we have provided £2.6 million to fund innovative projects working to improve outcomes for people living with neurological conditions.

Whilst the Framework is not condition specific, it covers issues affecting people with all types of neurological conditions, including dystonia. The Scottish Government is working in partnership with NHS24 to update accessible public-facing information about dystonia , and other neurological conditions, for the NHS Inform website.

We recognise that uncertainty while waiting can have an impact on health and wellbeing. That is why we have launched a new Waiting Well Hub on NHS Inform to provide patients with information to support their health and wellbeing while waiting for health and social care services. This includes information on physical and mental health, as well as advice about practical issues like money worries.

The Centre for Sustainable Delivery was commissioned by the Scottish Government to establish Specialty Delivery Groups in order to support, innovate and develop high quality services across Scotland. Significant progress has been made to release outpatient activity through redesign, with over 100,000 appointments released through Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Patient-Initiated Review (PIR), well ahead of the target of 50,000 for 2023-24.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23811 on‎ 8 January 2024. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Difficult decisions have had to be made to allow us to balance the Scottish Government budget while still progressing implementation of our mental health and wellbeing and other strategies from a revised direct budget of £260.3 million.

The in-year budget changes impacted on a number of planned new programmes which could not proceed as anticipated. Planned increased funding to existing programmes were also not able to be progressed. This included programmes related to Mental Health and Primary Care; regional CAMHS developments; full implementation of Coming Home; full implementation of the new Mental Welfare Commission Patient Records System; and improving prisoner mental health.

Despite the savings made, we have continued to focus on delivery of our mental health and wellbeing strategy and recently published delivery plan, which includes commitments around mental health services and specific programmes of work around learning disability and autism, and cross-cutting trauma work.

The Music Education Partnership Group had a joint meeting with myself and the Minister for Culture, Europe And International Development on 29 June 2023.

This was an introductory meeting and covered school and community music in Scotland, the various MEPG initiatives including the “We Make Music” initiatives, recent MEPG engagement with research on music learning and an update on a MEPG paper on the Vision for Scotland’s music industry.

Scottish Government officials liaise with MEPG and a range of music education partners on an ongoing basis.

The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme. In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.

Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams.This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

• The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme.
• In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.
• Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams. This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

The Chief Constable of Police Scotland, with oversight from the Scottish Police Authority, considers any requests to provide training to other police forces or organisations via their International Development and Innovation Unit.

Police Scotland have confirmed that no training, advice, guidance or support has been provided to the Israel Police, the Israel Defence Forces, or the Israeli Security Services.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The assignment of probationer teachers to individual schools is a matter for each local authority.