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Social Security Scotland will make payments for both the early learning and school age grants by Summer 2019. Regulations to provide for that assistance will be laid in draft for the Scottish Parliament’s approval in the usual way in advance of the first payments being made.

The Best Start Grant is made up of 3 separate grants and an application is required for each grant. Implementation will be in 2 phases.

Social Security Scotland will accept applications from those eligible for the Pregnancy and Baby Grant before Christmas 2018.

Delivery of the Early Learning and School Age Grants will follow by Summer 2019. Applications for these grants will not be accepted beforehand. Once delivery has begun, payments will be made to those who are eligible on the date of application and will not be made retrospectively to those who may have qualified earlier.

Part 2 Chapter 5 of the 2018 Act relates to the liability of individuals to repay assistance that is given in error under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018. The Scottish Government intends to commence most of that chapter of the Act shortly, and will lay Commencement Regulations and explanatory material before the Parliament in the usual way.

Yes, expenditure on the Best Start Pregnancy and Baby Grant will be demand led.

The Early Years Assistance (Best Start Grants) (Scotland) Regulations 2018 do not have a backdate period. They will come in to force the day after the date on which they are made. This date will be aligned with the start date for applications.

Scottish Government support for advice services is intended to maximise household resources and ensure people understand their statutory rights and have recourse to redress if those rights are not upheld.

The Scottish Government is funding a part-time welfare advice service facilitator in 2018-19 to support the embedding of Welfare Advice Services in Health and Social Care settings, with a particular focus on general practice and early years.

Provision of welfare advice is a matter for individual NHS Boards and general practices and we do not hold information centrally on where advisers are located.

Sectarian hate crime - like any hate crime - has a hugely damaging effect on victims and communities so it is important that everybody plays their part to challenge it. That is why we fully support Police Scotland in taking robust action to both tackle hate crime and increase the confidence of victims to report incidents either directly to them or to a Third Party reporting centre.

Social Security Scotland's strategic objectives will be introduced in the Agency's Corporate Plan. The Corporate Plan will be published shortly, as an interim document. As with everything it does, Social Security Scotland will develop and iterate its strategic objectives in collaboration with stakeholder communities. An updated version of the Corporate Plan, which reflects this consultation and collaboration, will be published next year.

The Scottish Government received more than 300 applications for the core group but, unfortunately, none of these were from black or minority ethnic communities.

Despite this, we remain committed to ensuring that the perspectives of seldom heard and hard to reach groups, including people from BME communities, are strongly reflected in the social security charter. To that end, we are working with stakeholders to run targeted focus groups in September to seek detailed feedback on the work completed to date. We will then invite representatives from each of the groups who participate in these sessions to join the core group.

The analysis of this survey will be published later in 2018. At this point, the findings will be shared with the Disability and Carer Benefits Expert Advisory Group via email. The group will be given the opportunity to discuss the findings and next steps with researchers from the Experience Panels team at their next meeting after publication, which is 1 November 2018.