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The Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group defines residential rehab as facilities offering programmes which aim to support individuals to attain an alcohol or drug-free lifestyle and to be re-integrated into society, provide intensive psychosocial support and a structured programme of daily activities, and which residents are required to attend over a fixed period of time.

The Scottish Government recognises that diversity of treatment options is important to empower individuals to have more choice and to meet the needs of individuals seeking different types of recovery, and this includes taking a person-centred approach to the duration of treatment.

A breakdown of how funding is allocated to ADPs since 2017 can be found on the Scottish Government website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/alcohol-and-drug-partnerships-funding-allocations/

The Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group defines residential rehab as facilities offering programmes which aim to support individuals to attain an alcohol or drug-free lifestyle and to be re-integrated into society, provide intensive psychosocial support and a structured programme of daily activities, and which residents are required to attend over a fixed period of time.

The Scottish Government recognises that diversity of treatment options is important to empower individuals to have more choice and to meet the needs of individuals seeking different types of recovery, and this includes taking a person-centred approach to treatment length.

The Scottish Government will address the impact of changes to service provision on access and availability to alcohol and drug recovery services by continuing to ensure that the specific needs of women are considered in the design and delivery of services, and that a gendered approach is taken in all new or developing initiatives across the National Mission to reduce deaths and improve lives.

The Scottish Government provided specific funding of around £1.5m per year to Glasgow City Council to support the 218 Service. As a result of that funding relationship, Glasgow informed the Scottish Government of its plans to re-tender the service last year and discussions took place to confirm that the funding would still be available following that exercise.

Glasgow City Council has provided assurances that it worked closely with Turning Point Scotland to support individuals in transitioning to other support arrangements and that other services, including residential placements, are available to support people with similar needs. In particular, it has confirmed that all 218 service residents had moved on from the service as of 31 January 2024 – some residents naturally came to the end of their stay, while others moved back to their own tenancy or to accommodation with support.

Public Health Scotland worked in close consultation with key stakeholders to develop the core minimum dataset, which will form the basis for the monitoring of residential rehabilitation. Early versions of the dataset were shared with the Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Advisory Group (MERAG) and the Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group (RRDWG), which have representatives from groups such as individuals with experience, families and recovery organisations.

Current residential rehabilitation clients were given the opportunity to complete a survey to provide details of their own experience. Qualitative research was also undertaken with people with lived experience of having accessed residential rehabilitation to explore their experiences of the pathways into, through and out of this form of treatment.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) follows statistical disclosure control (SDC) when publishing data, including those submitted for their most recent report on statutory-funded residential rehabilitation placements.

PHS applies the SDC to data due to the sensitive nature of the topic, and to reduce the risk of identifying individuals, (especially those from small geographic areas) who in this case were the number of people accessing residential rehabilitation for substance use in River Garden.

The data was therefore suppressed and an asterisk used to denote this in the published report.

I will be responding directly to the EIS on the important issues raised around teacher workload in their most recent report.

I have also strengthened teacher union engagement in recent months through the creation of the Professional Association Forum, which allows for more routine engagement to discuss issues such as workload.

Any changes to teachers’ terms and conditions require tripartite agreement through the SNCT.

As set out in the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Action: Policy Package, Climate change action: policy package - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) , we are developing a package of incentives schemes for deer management to pilot across Scotland. These local schemes will be implemented this year in different parts of Scotland to test different approaches to incentives and to better understand the barriers to deer management.

In addition to this the Managing Deer for Climate and Nature: consultation closed on 29 March 2024. This consultation sought views on proposed legislative changes to Scotland’s systems of deer management, including in relation to a number of recommendations made by the Deer Working Group (DWG) in their 2020 report. The responses are currently being analysed and an update will be provided in due course.

The Scottish Government’s future legislative programme will be set out as part of the upcoming Programme for Government in due course. In the meantime we are working on those DWG recommendations that do not require primary legislation through the Strategic Deer Board. Deer Management Strategic Board - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs) are valued stakeholders and my officials at Transport Scotland engage frequently with the RTPs on various matters. However, whilst Strathclyde Partnership for Transport manages the Glasgow Subway, RTPs have no formal role in governance of ScotRail or Caledonian Sleeper services.

Similarly, as bus services operate in a deregulated market, they are not subject to governance from local authorities or RTPs. However, local transport authorities, which include the model 3 RTPs, have a range of powers available to them in relation to bus services, including flexible tools available through the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 and the ability to subsidise services, where they consider these to be socially necessary. As such, my officials engage with them regularly in relation to bus services.

The Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund (NRF) provides a total of at least £65 million for nature restoration projects led from communities across Scotland over this parliament. Financial decisions beyond that time will be announced as part of the annual budget process in the next parliament.