Chamber and committees

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Mental-Health/Strategy

We will publish a new ten-year Mental Health Strategy later in 2016, following a further phase of public engagement. It will build on the successes of the previous Mental Health Strategy 2012 to 2015, with ongoing work on existing commitments being included where appropriate. We therefore have no plans to publish a separate report.

Curriculum for excellence is setting higher standards than ever before in literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing. Results from a recent Growing Up in Scotland study show improvement in three-year-olds’ vocabulary but our ambition is to close the attainment gap altogether. We will bring forward a programme of work focusing on early intervention and improving attainment. This includes the £750 million Scottish attainment fund to boost literacy and numeracy in our most deprived areas, the new national improvement framework, attainment advisers for every local authority and the raising attainment for all programme with over 50 literacy-based school projects.

The Scottish Government recognises that parents also have a key role in supporting their children’s speech and language development and we provide support through campaigns such as Play Talk Read and Bookbug.

We know that a skilled early years workforce is also key to supporting young children’s learning, and that the most disadvantaged children benefit most, which is why First Minister announced in October 2015 that nurseries in the most deprived areas of Scotland will, from 2018, benefit from an additional graduate or teacher in nurseries with early learning expertise.

The Scottish Government does not collect this data centrally. All practitioners working within the early learning and childcare sector are required, as part of their training, to gain knowledge and understanding about speech and language development and are expected to undertake career-long learning to further augment the skills obtained during their initial training.

Scottish Government officials meet cervical screening coordinators from all NHS boards on a quarterly basis to discuss a range of issues relating to the national screening programme, including increasing uptake of screening. NHS boards have responsibility for publicising screening within their local area and for working closely with their communities to increase screening uptake. Work of this nature is continually taking place within NHS boards. Recent local initiatives have included development of a toolkit which allows GP practices to benchmark their current practice and develop action plans to improve their uptake and an ongoing pharmacy prescription bag pilot which involves pharmacists targeting key cervical cancer screening promotional messages to those eligible to participate.

Following recent changes to the eligible age range and frequency of screening in the cervical screening programme an awareness raising campaign will soon be launched, this will aim to highlight to all women the importance of attending cervical screening and to address some of the barriers which prevent women attending. Furthermore, our on-going ‘Detect Cancer Early’ social marketing campaigns aim to raise awareness and encourage participation in the national cancer screening programmes.

The Education (additional support for learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 requires education authorities to identify, provide and review the additional support needs of their pupils. An additional support need may arise for any reason and may be of short or long-term duration. The additional support provided is intended to overcome barriers to learning which may arise as a result of learning environment, health or disability, family circumstances and social and emotional factors.

The Scottish attainment challenge was established to close the educational attainment gap between young people from our most and least deprived communities. The attainment Scotland fund, currently provides funding to those primary schools and authorities identified as having the highest concentrations of The Scottish index of multiple deprivation (SIMD) one and two. We will also allocate additional funding to schools on the basis of the number of eligible children that meet the criteria for free school meals. If a BME, disabled or LGBTI child's educational attainment is affected by poverty related disadvantage, they will also benefit from increased support through the Scottish attainment challenge. This is in addition to existing policies aimed at addressing the support required by other groups of young people.

The Scottish Government has taken significant action to support families affected by alcohol harm. Our alcohol framework contains more than 40 measures to tackle alcohol-related harm which include actions to support families.

The Scottish Government provides funding to public and third sector organisations for this. We fund Scottish families affected by alcohol and drugs (£363,766 in the past two years 2015-16 and 2016-17) to support families. We fund Lloyds TSB Foundation and Partnership Drugs Initiative (PDI) - £1,435,000 in the past two years 2015-16 and 2016-17 - for targeting supporting for vulnerable children and families affected by substance misuse.

The Scottish Government also supports alcohol and drug partnerships whose work ensures family members of people misusing alcohol and drugs are safe, well-supported and have improved life-chances. As a result, alcohol and drug services are broadening their thinking through whole family approaches and adopting a more family inclusive practice which is in keeping with the Scottish Government’s Quality Principles: Standard Expectations of care and Support in Drug and Alcohol Services (2014).

The Scottish Government’s national guidance for child protection sets out our expectations that all services working with vulnerable children and families should have robust measures in place. We also published updated and bespoke substance misuse guidance ‘Getting our Priorities Right’ in 2013, for use by all practitioners working with children and families where substance misuse is a factor.

Our plans for further action are built on the Scottish Government’s ongoing commitment to tackling parental alcohol and drug misuse and its effect on children. We continue to fund public and third sector initiatives. We are also committed to a refresh of the alcohol framework during 2016 which will set out future actions in more detail. For example, we are considering the findings which were launched on 9 June 2016 by the Lloyds TSB PDI project.

The number of trained educational psychologists practising in Scottish local authorities since 2010 is shown in the following table.

Source: Teachers in Scotland 2015, supplementary tables, Table 5.3: Other centrally employed staff, 2007-2015, http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/teachcenssuppdata/teachcensus2015

The Scottish Government continue to work in partnership with the National Scottish steering group for educational psychologists to ensure a sustainable supply of trained educational psychologists to meet potential future needs.

The Scottish Government has been in contact with CLIC Sargent regarding its proposal and has received a briefing on the reasons behind its decision. We await the outcome of the consultation however we have no remit to intervene in decisions taken by third sector organisations.

The Scottish Government understand that this is currently a proposal on which CLIC Sargent is consulting. We are confident from discussion with CLIC Sargent that it has alternative support in place to provide an invaluable service to children and young people with cancer. We support improving outcomes for children and young people with cancer through the managed service network for children and young people with cancer which published its cancer plan in February this year. The Scottish Government allocated an additional £2.5 million from our new cancer strategy, beating cancer: ambition and action, to support the managed service network for children and young people in its work.