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We have made 18 payments so far to 15 buildings, with 10 currently under assessment with a partial payment and 5 with full payment and assessment having concluded. All buildings with cladding concerns have and will continue to be offered fully funded assessments.

In the programme to date this has been raised twice with regard to buildings participating in the pilot. As part of the building assessment programme we have had discussions with fire engineers when they have raised concerns regarding carparks in buildings.

Through the Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Supports and Services Framework, we are providing local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health supports for children, young people, their families and their carers. North Ayrshire Council’s share of this year’s funding is £360,000 and Inverclyde Council’s is £192,000.

In North Ayrshire, the following supports and services for children and young people are delivered through the funding:

• Family-Centred Wellbeing Service: A multi-agency, strengths-focussed, community-based assessment and support service for families with children aged 5-12.
• Aberlour Sustain Service: Offers support to families with children aged 5-12 experiencing a range of challenges, including poverty, isolation, mental health and wellbeing issues, self-esteem, and anxiety.
• Crisis Counselling: Works with children and young people aged 5-24 who need very specific response methods to permit them to relate their emotional and mental health difficulties in age-specific ways and enable them to develop coping strategies and support them through challenging situations.
• Therapeutic Services For Care-Experienced Children And Young People: Play therapy, music therapy, dance therapy and art therapy for children and young people aged 5-26. These approaches have proved successful in addressing significant trauma and have enabled young people to develop coping strategies, self-regulate and develop sustainable skills.
• Mental Health And Wellbeing Project Delivery Officers: ‘Your Resilience’ sessions for multiple youth groups and positive mental wellbeing sessions alongside youth workers, via the mobile youth centre, ensuring young people who are geographically isolated have access to supports and services.
• Penumbra Self-Harm Project: Supports primary schools to continue to embed the ‘My Body My Way’ resource, runs parent support groups and workshops on how to deal with self-harm, and provides therapeutic support for children and young people displaying self-harming behaviours. For those aged 10-24.
• Bespoke Mental Health And Wellbeing: Delivering bespoke co-produced intervention with families who are currently under either voluntary or statutory measures with social work or the children and families team.

In Inverclyde, the following supports and services for children and young people are delivered through the funding:

• Inverclyde Emotional Wellbeing Triage Team: An inter-agency team of children and young people’s mental health services. Children, young people and families only tell their story once as the referral is handled by professionals on their behalf.
• Action For Children Wellbeing Service: This is a preventative mental health service aimed at P7 pupils at risk of non-attendance due to anxiety-based issues through transition to secondary education.
• Barnardo’s Wellbeing Support Worker Service: This service works with children and young people with additional support needs and their families to build parental capacity in response to the child’s developmental, social, and emotional needs.
• Cygnets Programme: This programme is aimed at parents and carers who are supporting children and young people experiencing difficulties due to autism spectrum condition.
• Children And Young People’s Participation Service: Workshops are being piloted in education establishments to gain the views of children and young people who have completed or are undergoing work with mental health and wellbeing services.

It is not possible for us to break down the amount spent on each of the above supports and services as local authorities are not required to provide us with this information under the terms of the grant.

In the first year of the Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund for adults in 2021-2022, we funded 38 projects supporting adults living in North Ayrshire and 20 projects supporting adults living in Inverclyde.

In North Ayrshire these were:

Scotland’s Redress Scheme is committed to providing a swifter and less adversarial option than court action for survivors of abuse in care. We are aware that, for some applicants, the process is taking longer than they have expected, and officials are working to ensure opportunities for improving the service are identified and acted upon.

Recent improvements include the recruitment of additional case workers. There are currently 17 case workers in post, and by the middle of November 2022 this will rise to 23.

It is not possible to give an average or target time from receipt of an application through to issuing of a redress payment and apology. Applications progress at differing rates depending on how complete they are when submitted, the availability of information, evidence and records, and the extent of verification checks required. Priority is given to applicants with a terminal illness and those over 68 years of age.

On 26 October 2022 16 case workers were employed, working to 15.4 full time equivalent (FTE).

From the 14 November 2022, 23 case workers are expected to be in post, with a FTE of 22.2.

Audit Scotland’s 2017 progress report made seven recommendations for the Scottish Government. Since then, two of the recommendations have been completed in full, four have been partially completed and one has not been completed.

The SDS Implementation Plan 2019-2021 built on the learning from the Audit Scotland report and incorporated the inputs of third sector organisations, COSLA and people with lived experience. The implementation of this plan was disrupted by the emergence of COVID19, and efforts to respond to this included publishing SDS pandemic guidance in July 2020.

The Scottish Government will issue a significant update of the SDS Statutory Guidance later this month, and is currently working with COSLA and a national group of stakeholders to develop an SDS improvement plan to drive improvements in SDS implementation covering the years leading up to the establishment of the National Care Service. This will take into account the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report of 2017 as well as from reports published since then, including the Feeley report of 2021.

The New Scots refugee integration strategy is built on partnership and collaboration, led by the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Scottish Refugee Council, and involves a wide range of partners across different sectors.

The New Scots Core Group brings together key stakeholders and is responsible for monitoring and reviewing progress against the overarching outcomes of the strategy. The Core Group is chaired by Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow.

The Core Group usually meets four times per year. This year, the group undertook a two-part workshop in January and February, as part of the New Scots Refugee Integration Delivery Project. The Core Group then met in June and in October, with the final meeting of the year set to take place in December.

We will publish the minutes from the October meeting in December, once cleared by Core Group at the next meeting. We will also publish minutes of the Group’s other meetings from 2022.

ScotRail does not record passenger complaints data by region or local authority area, but by rail route. The following table shows ScotRail’s complaints data for routes which serve the South Scotland region from 1 April 2022:

The Scottish Government remains committed to supporting all survivors of childhood abuse. We are currently considering the evidence, findings and recommendations which have come out of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales, and will do the same for the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry when it reports the outcome of its investigations in due course. The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry continues to investigate the abuse of children in care in Scotland.

Applicants have six months from receipt of offer of payment to accept or decline the offer. As of 31 October 2022 payments totalling £8,570,168 have been made to survivors or their next of kin.

The most recently available data for payment breakdown, as of 30 September 2022, shows that redress payments of £3,464,900 have been attributed to organisations contributing to the scheme. The NHS boards contribution is included in this figure, however, for survivor data privacy reasons further breakdown of the data to the level of individual organisations would not be appropriate at this time.

There are 16 contributors, with potential contributions agreed reaching £122m. The live list has been published online since 8 December 2021.