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The requested information is not held by the Scottish Government.

Eradicating child poverty in Scotland is a national mission and this Government’s top priority.

The Scottish Budget for 2025-26 outlines wide-ranging investment to deliver progress on our national mission to eradicate child poverty. This includes investment in breakfast clubs, to expand the provision of free school meals to around 25,000 more children and to develop the systems to mitigate the two-child limit.

Our action is making a real difference to families. On average, households with children in the poorest 10% of households are estimated to be £2,600 a year better off in 2025-26 as a result of Scottish Government policies. This value is projected to grow to an average of £3,700 a year by 2029-30.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government as it relates to an operational matter for the children’s hearings system.

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) publish their annual statistics, which sets out a measure on time taken to progress referrals through the children’s hearings system. The information is available on the SCRA website: Official Statistics - SCRA

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

15.8% of Disclosure Scotland’s total workforce is made up of agency or temporary employees. This is based on September full-time equivalent work figures and includes IT contractors as temporary employees.

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland is currently performing within its Service Level Agreement (SLA) to process 90% of applications within 14 days.

Disclosure Scotland is forecasted to spend £9.84 million on staff costs in financial year 2025 to 2026 to deliver our disclosure processing and support services. This is against a total forecasted Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit (RDEL) spend of £34 million. Of the £9.84 million, £900,000 has been allocated to improve processing times this financial year.

Children’s Hearings Scotland is responsible for the recruitment, training and retention of children’s hearings panel members and is assigned funding through the grant-in-aid process. It is a matter for the National Convener to allocate resource to the training of panel members. Grant-in-aid funding is detailed in CHS' annual report.

The Scottish Government values the commitment that adoptive families and practitioners make to providing safe, loving, nurturing homes for children and young people across Scotland.

We have awarded the following total funding since 2020 to the Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland; Adoption UK Scotland; St Andrew’s Children’s Society; Health In Mind; and Birthlink, who deliver services and support to adoptive families and practitioners:

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Disclosure Scotland’s service level agreement is to process 90% of applications within 14 days and we are currently performing within this target.

As of Monday 20 October 2025, there were 1,132 Protecting Vulnerable Group (PVG) applications relating to people working with children outstanding beyond 14 days.

Note 1: Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) applications from 1 April 2025 onwards, with the implementation of the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020, represents: Level 2 PVG scheme disclosure (Join), Level 2 PVG scheme disclosure (Existing), Confirmation of PVG scheme membership (Join) and Confirmation of PVG scheme membership (Existing). Prior to 1 April 2025, PVG applications represents: Scheme Record Disclosure, Short Scheme Record Disclosure, Existing Scheme Record Disclosure and Statements of Scheme Membership.

Note 2: This figure relates to PVG applications solely applying to work with children with a processing time of 14 days and above at the time of data extraction.

Note 3: The processing time for applications currently being processed on the system incorporates all time between an application being received by Disclosure Scotland, through to the time of data extraction. Disclosure Scotland deducts any time which the application was suspended on our system, such as being suspended for customer contact. Weekend days are included in the number of processing days for applications, but national holidays and Scottish Government public and privilege holidays are excluded.

The Scottish Government has not incurred any spend on consultancy fees in relation to The Promise since 2020. Martin Whitfield may wish to refer to the recent Freedom of Information (FOI) response which provides a full breakdown of expenditure associated with The Promise Scottish Government spend on The Promise: FOI release - gov.scot

There are currently 12 civil servants assigned to the core Promise team. Work to keep The Promise is cross portfolio and officials across Scottish Government are actively engaged in work to support delivery of the recommendations set out in The Promise.

The Scottish Social Services Council publishes data annually on vacancies in social care services. The latest report, published on 10 March 2025, showed that as of 31 December 2023, 32% of Day Care of Children services reported a vacancy.