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The Munby judgment is an English case relating to a particular local authority’s policy on the payment of foster carers and the interpretation of English legislation and so therefore it does not have any direct impact in Scotland.

Children and Carers in Kinship and Foster Care have the following access to service:

Both Kinship and Foster Care Allowances are fully disregarded as income for Housing Benefit.

The Scottish Government is providing over £13 million for short breaks (respite) between 2010-15 to be channelled through the voluntary sector. We know that organisations supporting Kinship Carers such as Children 1^st and Geeza Break have benefitted from this fund.

Access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services is available to all children and young people equally and is assessed on their clinical needs.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) Act 2009 places education authorities under a duty to identify, meet and review the additional support needs of all children and young people for whose education they are responsible. The Act automatically deems all children and young people who are looked after to have additional support needs, unless the authority determine that they do not require additional support to benefit from their school education.

Information on what the average cost has been of keeping a child in (a) residential, (b) foster and (c) kinship care in each of the last three years is not centrally held and no research has been carried out on cost differentials.

The data that we collect from local authorities on looked after children is about demographic information and not the cost of keeping a child in care.

Children in formal kinship care arrangements are deemed by the Children’s Hearings System to have needs which require them to be placed under a compulsory supervision order.

Children in informal kinship care arrangements are not deemed to require formal supervision but may have other support needs.

The Kinship Care Order proposed through the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill aims to provide additional support, that will offer a more stable environment for children living in kinship families, who do not require regular supervision from the Children’s Hearings System or Social Work.

At 31 July 2012 there were 4,076 children living in formal kinship care arrangements in Scotland. All carers of children in formal kinship care arrangements are entitled to receive financial support from their local authority.

Information on the number of carers of children living in informal care arrangements who receive financial support from their local authority is not centrally held.

The Scottish Government does not pay for care placements directly but supports local authorities through block grant funding.

Table 28 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill Financial Memorandum sets out what the Scottish Government estimates that local authorities will spend on formal care following the introduction of the proposed kinship care order.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/Bills/62233.aspx.

The estimated cost of specific new support to informal kinship carers in possession of a Kinship Care Order from 2015-16 is set out in table 32 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill Financial Memorandum.

The Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games Organising Committee invited the Deputy First Minister on 9 February 2012 to participate in the event to announce their sponsorship agreement with Atos, which took place on 16 March 2012.

All Games Partners including representatives from Glasgow City Council, Commonwealth Games Scotland and the Scottish Government attended the event to mark the significant contribution which Atos sponsorship will make towards the successful delivery of the Games.

Atos is providing technology that will be used for accreditation services, volunteer recruitment and the instant relaying of results, all of which shall enhance the Glasgow 2014 Games experience. All Games Partners were pictured to mark the announcement.

The SG has every sympathy with individuals and families who have been adversely affected by the UK Government’s welfare reforms. Whilst appreciating that an assessment process is necessary, the alarming stories of peoples’ experiences suggest that what is in place just now is causing a great deal of undue stress and hardship to people across Scotland.

That is why Housing Minister, Margaret Burgess, wrote recently to the UK Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, highlighting the Scottish Government’s concerns at Atos and DWP’s administering of the Work Capability Assessment process and urging him to take the necessary steps to ensure that the very worrying cases that are being reported are never repeated.

Securing sponsors is a matter for the organising committee and it should be acknowledged that Glasgow 2014’s contract with Atos do not relate in any way to the services it provides on behalf of DWP. In addition, securing sponsorship is vital to the success of the Games and to reduce the need for additional public funds to stage them.

All of Scotland’s local authorities have been offered funding from the current budget of £55 million for this financial year for area based schemes.

It should be noted an unallocated amount of £5 million has been reallocated from the original budget of £60 million for area based schemes to mitigate the impact of the “bedroom tax”. A further £5 million from underutilised accruals (i.e. unused provision) from 2012-13 takes the total contribution to £10 million.

Details of funding requested by councils as at end June 2013 are set out in the table below. All requests have been allocated in full. Requests for further funding are currently being considered and will be announced in due course.

Summary of Local Authority Funding Requests – to end June 2013

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

I met with each of the major energy suppliers individually over the autumn/winter of last year to raise concerns about energy price rises and to press the individual energy suppliers to support vulnerable consumers and will be looking to arrange further meetings with the utilities in due course to keep up the dialogue on fuel poverty.